BR  121  .F68  1906 

Foster,  George  Burman,  1858- 

1918. 
The  finality  of  the 


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STARR  WILLAKD  COTTING  ROLLIN  D.  SALISBURY 

JAMES  ROWLAND  ANGELL       WILLIAM  1.  THOMAS  SHAILER  MATHEWS 

CARL  DARLING   BUCK  FREDERIC  IVES  CARPENTER         OSKAR  BOLZA 

JULIDS  8TIEGLITZ  JACQUES  LOEB 


THESE  VOLUMES  ARE  DEDICATED 

TO   THE   MEN   AND   WOMEN 

OP   OUR  TIME   AND  COUNTRY  WHO   BY   WISE  AND  GENEROUS   GIVING 

HAVE  ENCOURAGED  THE   SEARCH   AFTER  TRUTH 

IN   ALL   DEPARTMENTS   OP   KNOWLEDGE 


THE  FINALITY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
RELIGION 


THE  FINALITY  OF  THE  CHRIS 
TIAN  RELIGION 


BY 

GEORGE  BURMAN  FOSTER 

PEOFESSOR  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF 
RELIGION 


THE  DECENNIAL  PUBLICATIONS 
SECOND  SERIES    VOLUME  XVI 


CHICAGO 
THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

r.)06 


Copyright  1906  by 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 


Published  January,  190o 


Composed  and  Printed  by 

le  University  of  Chicauo  Press 

Cliicago,  Illinois,  U.  S.  A. 


TO 
POWELL  BEXTON  REYNOLDS 

MY  FIRST  GREAT  TEACHER 


''Our  age  is,  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  the  age  of  criticism, 
and  everything  must  suljmit  to  it.  Religion,  on  the  strength  of  its 
sanctity,  and  law,  on  the  strength  of  its  majesty,  try  to  withdraw 
themselves  from  it;  but  by  so  doing  they  arouse  just  suspicions, 
and  cannot  claim  that  sincere  respect  which  reason  pays  to  those 
only  who  have  been  able  to  stand  its  free  and  open  examination." — 
Kant. 


PKEFACE 

In  the  summers  of  1902  and  1903  the  author  had  the 
privilege  to  deliver  two  courses  of  lectures  before  the  Har- 
vard Summer  School  of  Theology,  to  ministers  and  students 
for  the  ministry  of  many  of  our  Protestant  denominations. 
Those  who  heard  the  lectures  expressed  profound  interest  in 
them  and  earnestly  solicited  their  speedy  publication.  These 
are  those  lectures,  but  greatly  enlarged,  even  to  the  extent 
of  additional  chapters.  It  should  also  be  said  that  the  more 
popular  style  of  the  lecture  has  been  eliminated  for  the  most 
part,  though  in  places  not  entirely,  and  a  more  technical  and 
formal  treatment  adopted. 

The  delay  in  their  publication  has  been  due  to  a  com- 
bination of  hindrances.  Without  recounting  them  to  the 
reader,  they  yet  constitute  the  author's  apology  to  his 
original  audience,  which  had  the  right  to  expect  the  book 
at  a  much  earlier  date.  In  this  connection  he  may  say  that 
the  second  volume — the  increasingly  constructive  part  of 
the  work — is  expected  to  appear  in  the  early  spring. 

The  author  may  not  claim  originality,  in  the  strict  sense 
of  the  word,  for  this  book.  Still,  the  constructive  idea  is 
his,  the  plan  and  process  of  the  argument  are  his,  thoughts 
which  are  shared  by  others  are  independently  his,  and  even 
the  thoughts  which  are  not  his  by  creation  are  yet  his  by 
patient  reflection  in  the  course  of  wide  study  in  philosophy 
and  theology.  However,  he  has  sought  to  write  an  effective 
rather  than  an  original  book.  His  sources  have  been  indi- 
cated sufficiently,  he  trusts,  either  in  the  text  or  in  footnotes. 

The  book  is  a  mirror  of  the  development  of  the  author's 
own  experience — a  development,  moreover,  which  has  not 
yet  come  to  a  close;  a  fact  which  is   also  mirrored  in  the 


xii  Preface 

book.  He  believes  that  a  multitude  of  thoughtful  men  and 
women  are  passing  through  an  experience  similar  to  his  own; 
and  that  a  greater  multitude  will  travel,  with  bleeding  feet, 
the  same  via  dolorosa  tomorrow  and  the  day  after.  It  is  a 
pathetic  and  tragic,  or  inspiring  and  illuminating,  spectacle, 
according  as  one  looks  at  it.  Be  that  as  it  may,  to  all  such 
the  author  offers  himself  as  fellow-pilgrim,  not  without  some 
hope  that  they  may  be  a  little  less  lonely  for  his  comrade- 
ship, a  little  less  bewildered  for  his  guidance,  and  a  little 
less  sorrowful  and  discouraged  for  his  own  joy  and  hope. 
At  all  events,  he  has  said  what  he  sees,  as  was  his  duty,  in  a 
straightforward  way,  obedient  to  Robert  Browning's  advice: 
"Preach  your  truth;  then  let  it  work."  Hence  the  reader 
will  find  no  orthodoxy  in  this  book  under  the  mask  of  liber- 
alism, and  no  liberalism  under  the  mask  of  orthodoxy;  but 
yea  is  yea  and  nay  is  nay,  under  the  firm  conviction  that 
whatever  is  more  than  these  cometh  of  evil.  If  the  author 
should  sometimes  hold  back  the  truth  for  prudential  reasons, 
he  does  not  see  how  his  fellow-pilgrims  could  know  when  he 
was  tellinsr  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth,  and  when  he 
was  holding  the  truth  back  for  reasons  of  policy. 

Liberals  will  complain  of  the  superfluousness  of  the 
chapter  on  the  dissolution  of  authority-religion.  They  will 
say  that  such  a  standpoint  has  been  long  overcome.  The 
author  admits  that  the  battle  has  been  fought  and  won  as 
regards  the  question  of  principle.  But  it  is  a  fact  that  the 
fruits  of  the  victory  have  not  yet  been  fully  harvested.  In 
practice,  authority-religion  is  in  full  force  in  all  our  denomi- 
nations in  some  parts  of  the  country,  and  in  some  of  our 
denominations  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  The  church's 
theological  Christ  still  supplants  the  real  Jesus  of  history, 
whose  spirit  alone  is  the  life  of  our  spirit ;  sacraments  instead 
of  the  fellowship  of  Christian  persons  are  set  up  as  the  media- 
tion of  salvation ;  and  an  external  religion  of  historical  occur- 


Preface  xiii 

rences  is  substituted  for  the  invisible  impression  made  by 
persons.  The  watchword,  "Christianity  is  an  historical  re- 
ligion," is  superficially  true,  but  fundamentally  false.  It 
means  that  Christianity  is  a  religion  of  historical  "facts" — 
"redemptive  facts,"  Heilsthatsachcm,  they  are  called — not 
so  very  many  and  not  so  very  certain,  neither  so  many  nor  so 
certain  as  they  used  to  be — whereas  it  is  at  bottom  a  religion 
of  spirit  and  of  personality.  It  is  not  a  religion  of  facts, 
but  of  values;  and  values  are  timeless;  that  is,  Christianity 
is  an  eternal  religion  which  is  in,  but  not  of,  the  historical. 
In  the  mystery  of  creative  personalities,  fructified,  indeed, 
by  the  stream  of  history,  fountains  are  opened  from  which 
higher  values,  unattainable  by  us  men  of  ourselves,  stream 
forth  from  eternity  into  the  human  world.  Personalities  are 
the  channels  of  divine  grace.  Signs  are  not  wanting  that 
this  truth  is  beginning  to  dawn  upon  the  bearers  of  the 
authority  cult.  The  author  hopes  to  have  contributed  some- 
what toward  realizing  in  practice — especially  in  his  own 
denomination,  the  Baptist,  where  for  long  a  Catholicizing 
tendency  has  been  subverting  the  basic  principles  of  the 
denomination — the  triumph  in  principle  of  the  religion  of 
persons  and  not  of  things,  of  freedom  and  not  of  external 
authority,  of  ethical  ideality  and  not  of  ecclesiastical  force 
or  politics.  He  has  but  to  add  that  the  chapter  in  question 
was  written  as  it  now  stands  before  the  appearance  of  Saba- 
tier's  posthumous  work  on  the  same  subject ;  and  he  believes 
that  his  briefer,  more  closely  articulated  discussion  has  a 
mission. 

Finally,  the  reader  is  referred  to  Introduction  for  exposi- 
tion of  the  plan  and  purpose  of  this  book. 

G.  B.  F. 

Chicago, 
December  12,  1905. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTORY 

Chapter         I.     Introduction 3 

Chapter        II.     Historical  Survey 23 

PART  I.    AUTHORITY-RELIGION  ( =  SUPERNATURALISM) 
AND  NATURALISM 

Chapter     III.     The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion  -        -      51 

Chapter      IV.     Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion         -        -      76 

Chapter       V.     The  Changed  View  of  the  World  and  of  Life     148 

Chapter      VI.     The  Naturalistic  and  the  Religious  View  of 

the  World 196 


PART  II.    THE  FINALITY  OF   CHRISTIANITY  AND 
THE  IDEA  OF  DEVELOPMENT 

Chapter    VII.     The  Essence  of  the  Christian  Religion  :  The 

Problem  of  Method 279 

Chapter  VIII.     The    Essence    of    the    Christian    Religion : 

Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  -        -         -     325 

Chapter     IX.     The    Essence    of    the    Christian    Religion : 

Jesus 395 


INTKODUCTORY 


CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTION 

1.  The  title  that  would  be  given  to  the  discussion  which 
herein  follows  would  be  different  both  in  different  periods  of 
history  and  in  different  ecclesiastical  and  doctrinal  move- 
ments in  the  present  time.  An  apologist  for  Catholic 
orthodoxy  would  name  his  work  the  infallible  papacy,  or  use 
some  equivalent  form  of  words;  for  Protestant  orthodoxy, 
the  infallible  Book,  Christianity  a  revealed  religion,  the 
deity  of  Christ,  or  some  kindred  terminology ;  for  Christian 
rationalism,  the  divinity  of  the  innate  ideas,  or  eternal  truths 
of  reason  which  are  the  essence  of  Christianity,  or,  in 
Locke's  phrase,  the  reasonableness  of  Christianity;  for 
liberal  theology  of  the  older  type,  the  perfectibility  of  re- 
vealed religion;'  of  the  modern  type,  the  absoluteness  of 
Christianity;^  for  those  who  accept  the  hypothesis  of  the 
universality  and  endlessness  of  "becoming"  and  "develop- 
ment," the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion,  as  above,  inas- 
much as  this  caption  frankly  accentuates  the  issue  as  it  lies 
in  the  minds  of  most  thinkers  today. 

2.  Since  the  subject  as  worded  by  Catholic  and  Protestant 
orthodoxy  assumes  the  abstract  transcendence  of  God,  the 
dualism  between  the  human  and  the  divine,  and,  conse- 
quently, an  apocalyptic  revelation,  it  is  manifest  that  the 
orthodox  treatment  rests  upon  speculative  presuppositions 
which  are  now  entirely  discredited,  and  employs  a  method 
of  argumentation — namely,  the  passage  from  the  divine  to 
the  human,  from  the  perfection  of  the  revelation  to  the  per- 

1 E.  g.,  Keug,  Briefe  iiber  die  PerfectibiUfat  der  geoffenbarten  Religion, 
2£'.  g.,  Troeltsch,  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christenthums. 

3 


4      The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Keligion 

fection  of  the  religion,  from  authority  to  experience — which 
is  not  accorded  validity  in  the  modern  world.  This  would 
seem  to  be  a  sufficient  justification  for  abandoning  orthodox 
titles  for  our  book.  But  the  titles  of  rationalism,  with  its 
deistic  externality,  its  unverifiable  passage  from  the  innate- 
ness  to  the  divinity  of  the  essential  Christian  conceptions, 
and  especially  its  insensibility  to  the  psychological  and  his- 
torical origin  of  all  the  so-called  innate  ideas,  are  quite  as 
little  in  harmony  with  our  present  convictions  of  immanence 
and  growth.  The  word  "perfectibility"  expresses,  as  some- 
thing to  be  established,  what  the  subsequent  discussion 
assumes,  that  is,  the  constant  modification  and  development 
of  Christianity.  Thus,  it  is  the  obverse  side^  of  our  treat- 
ment and,  as  such,  is  correspondingly  appropriate  as  the 
title  of  this  work.  Against  the  use  of  the  word  "absolute" 
it  may  be  urged  that  the  validity  and  content  of  the  term 
are  anew  under  debate.  In  the  old  apologetics  the  word 
signified  "detachedness"'  from  all  conditions  of  otherwise 
human  process  and  occurrence.  From  the  point  of  view 
then  in  vogue  one  could  thus  consistently  speak  of  "Chris- 
tianity as  the  absolute  revelation;"  for  revelation  was  defined 
as  a  kind  of  unhistorical  miraculous  supernaturalism,  and 
Christianity  was  thought  of  as  revelation  rather  than  religion. 
But  according  to  a  later  scientific  terminology,  "absoluteness" 
came  to  signify  that  Christianity,  as  compared  with  the 
relative  truths  of  other  religions,  is  the  absolutely  perfect 
form  of  religion.  This  signification  of  the  expression  has 
its  source  in  modern  evolutionism,  especially  in  Hegel's  phi- 
losophy. But  since  the  expression  is  retained  both  by  those 
who  accept — e.  g.,  Troeltsch — and  those  who  reject — e.  g., 
Kaftan — these  presuppositions,  it  easily  contains  something 
vague  and  indefinite — as,  indeed,  is  the  case  with  these  very 

1  "Perfectibility  "   assumes  finality  and    proves  progress ;" finality  "  assumes 
progress  and  proves  ultimateness. 


Introduction 


thinkers  themselves,  who  use  the  word  with  significantly  dif- 
ferent nuances;  Kaftan,  as  a  rule,  having  in  mind  "revela- 
tion" when  he  uses  it;  Troeltsch,  "religion."  The  fact  that 
Ritschl  inveighed  against  further  use  at  all  of  the  word  has 
had  its  weight: 

The  absolute !  how  queer  that  sounds !  I  still  faintly 
remember  that  I  too  busied  myself  with  the  word  iu  the  days  of  my 
youth  when  the  Hegelian  terminology  threatened  to  draw  me  also 
into  its  vortex.  That  was  long  ago.  In  a  measure  the  word  has 
grown  strange  to  me.  I  found  that  there  was  no  far-reaching 
thought  in  it.' 

According  to  this,  the  word  would  seem  to  point  to  heights 
that  are  either  too  dizzy  or  too  barren  for  human  experience, 
and  on  this  account  the  tendency  grew  up  to  discard  it  from  the 
vocabulary  of  scientific  and  reflective  thought.  In  view  of 
these  general  remarks,  it  may  now  be  said  that  it  is  inadmis- 
sible to  use  the  expression,  in  connection  with  our  subject,  in 
the  old  apologetic  sense  of  "unrelatedness,"  of  Losgeldstheit, 
as  the  Germans  happily  say,  since  in  that  sense  there  is  no 
recognition  of  the  historicalness  and  consequent  relativity  of 
Christianity,  which  is  the  very  conception  that  gives  sting 
and  interest  to  the  problem  under  consideration;  but  also 
that,  needless  as  it  would  be  to  choose  a  title  that  is  repellent 
to  many  from  the  outset,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  may  not 
properly  interchange  the  word  with  "finality,"  when  it  is 
understood  beforehand  that  we  use  it  in  the  general  signifi- 
cation it  has  come  to  have  in  the  current  discussion  of  this 
subject.  Usage  has  already  made  the  term  to  include — not 
forgetting  the  nuances  referred  to  above  —  (1)  the  horizon 
of  universal  religious  history;  (2)  the  recognition  of  all  non- 
Christian  religions  as  relative  truths;  and  (3)  the  appre- 
ciation of  Christianity  as  that  form  of  religion  which  rounds 
out  these  relative  truths  to  the  "absolute."     But  this  third 

1  RiTSCHL,  Theologie  und  Melaphysik,  2d  ed.,  p.  18. 


6      The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

statement  already  points  to  the  significance  of  the  title  which 
I  have  chosen:  The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion.  The 
word  "finality"  is  used  not  so  much  in  the  sense  of  the  Latin 
finis  as  in  that  of  the  Greek  reXo?,  /.  c,  final  not  as  last,  but 
as  the  perfect,  the  consummate,  or,  last  because  perfect.  Is 
Christianity  the  ultimate  religion?  The  word,  unlike  "abso- 
luteness," suggests  no  thought  of  the  "unrelated,"  the  "un- 
become;"  rather  it  has  no  meaning  save  in  relation  to  the 
conceptions  of  development,  continuity,  history,  on  account 
of  which  our  problem  in  its  present  form  has  emerged.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  its  superior  appropriateness  to  those 
other  titles  is  evident. 

3.  Further  support  of  this  title  will  be  informally  involved 
in  the  exposition  of  the  nature  of  the  problem,  to  which  we 
now  pass.  The  problem  is  due  to  the  method  and  results  of 
historical  science  in  the  field  of  religious  phenomena,  to  the 
recognition  of  the  principles  of  development,  and  to  the  modern 
evolutionistic  metaphysics  of  the  "absolute."  The  religio- 
historical  method  employed  by  the  science  of  comparative 
religion  puts,  a  priori,  Christianity  on  a  stage  with  other 
religions  and  strips  it  of  its  character  as  unique  religion.  It 
investigates,  for  example,  the  kinship  between  any  given 
Christian  phenomenon  and  the  parallel  phenomenon  in  other 
religions,  and  determines  what  "moments"  Christianity  has 
borrowed  from  other  religions.  Formerly,  the  finality  of  the 
Christian  religion  was  based  upon  its  isolatedness  and  singu- 
larity. But,  from  the  point  of  view  of  comparative  religion, 
the  very  fact  that  Christianity  is  an  historical  religion 
involves  its  relationship  and  interaction  with  other  religions, 
as  against  its  supposed  isolatedness ;  and  the  fact  that  it  has 
drawn  thoughts  and  ideas  and  values  from  other  relierions 
raises  doubt  as  to  its  supposed  singularity.  Will  the  study* 
of  the  various  religions  yield  the  scientific  conclusion  that 


Introduction 


Christianity  is  the  absolutely  perfect  religion,  or,  perhaps, 
that  up  to  the  present  time  it  is  but  the  relatively  highest 
amonfif  the  relisfions?  Will  historical  science  sustain  our 
traditional  assurance  that  Christianity  is  not  one  religion 
among  many,  but,  as  Harnack  maintains,  the  religion, 
ultimate  and  incomparable?  Again:  development,  the 
working  hypothesis  of  the  science  of  religion,  is  believed  to 
be  a  valid  concept  when  applied  to  humanity  as  a  whole. 
Humanity  is  forever  progressing.  In  that  case,  is  Jesus 
final,  or  may  some  new  Master  arise  in  the  evolutionary 
development  of  the  race  who  shall  supersede  Him,  as  He 
superseded  Moses,  for  example?  If  Christian  experience 
is  to  be  referred  to  the  historical  personality  of  Jesus,  it 
would  appear  that  the  finality  of  Christianity  is  dependent 
upon  the  finality  of  Jesus.  But  can  Christianity  be  bound  to 
an  historical,  therefore  relative,  personality  of  the  distant 
past,  and  yet  continue  to  be  the  ideal  religion  of  our  forever- 
advancing  humanity?^  Even  granting  that  the  finality  of 
the  Christian  religion  is  not  indissolubly  connected  with  the 
finality  of  its  Founder,^  can  it  be  shown — as  in  that  case  it. 
must  needs  be  shown — that  the  adaptability  of  the  Christian 
religion,  originating  as  it  did  in  comparatively  simple  rela- 
tionships, is  equal  to  the  inconceivable  complexity  of  the 
future  of  humanity,  and  that  its  ideality  will  remain  ascend- 
ant, no  matter  what  the  moral  elevation  to  which  the  race 

1  "  Can  we  say  that  the  influence,  the  spirit,  the  principle,  whatever  we  may  call 
it,  which  was  first  expressed  in  the  life  of  Christ,  is  really  universal?  Can  we  say 
that  it  has  shown  itself  able  to  overcome  or  to  assimilate  all  other  influences,  and 
that  it  is  certain  to  do  so  still  more  in  the  future?  ....  Has  Christianity  been  only 
one  force  among  others,  struggling  with  them  in  such  a  way  that  the  result  is  like  a 
mechanical  resultant  which  cannot  specially  be  attributed  to  either  of  the  conflicting 
elements'?  Or  has  the  action  of  these  upon  it  always  produced  a  reaction,  like  the 
reaction  of  a  living  being  upon  an  environment  suited  to  it,  so  that  the  new  element 
was  taken  up  into  it,  and  made  the  means  to  the  development  of  a  higher  life?" — 
E.  Caied  in  New  World,  Vol.  VI  (1897),  p.  12. 

2  There  is  valid  objection  to  the  word  "  Founder,"  since  sects,  not  religions,  are 
*'  founded."    This  will  be  taken  up  in  a  much  later  connection. 


8      The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

may  mount?  This  would  be  tantamount  to  showing  that 
the  Christian  type  of  religion,  and  this  alone,  has  inner  right 
in  the  spiritual  development  of  the  race,  that  this  type  of 
religion  is  an  inalienable  constituent  of  human  nature,  or, 
in  Tertullian's  words,  meris  Jmmana  natiiraliter  Christiana. 
But  when  we  pass  on  to  philosophy,  we  are  told  that  the 
category  of  development  is  applicable  not  merely  to  the  study 
of  religion,  not  merely  to  human  history  in  general,  but  to 
Reality  as  a  whole.  Our  mode-philosophy  preaches  to  us 
that  there  is  nothing  static,  nothing  fixed,  nothing  final,  but 
that  mutation  and  process  characterize  all  that  is;  nay,  that 
it  belongs  to  the  very  nature  of  the  "absolute"  to  grow. 
Can  Christianity,  then,  be  final?  Thus  it  has  come  about 
that  our  religion,  with  a  Master  and  a  message  which  claim 
to  be  the  same  yesterday,  today,  and  forever,  is  summoned 
before  the  judgment  seat  of  a  progressive  humanity,  like  all 
other  professed  finalities,  and  that  the  human  heart,  with  its 
tumultuous  experiences,  is  querying  whether  there  be,  amid 
the  flux,  some  Eternal  Rock  whereon  it  can  find  strength 
and  stay  and  rest. 

From  this  description  of  our  task,  it  appears  that  our 
discussion  belongs  under  the  head  of  apologetics.  It  is  the 
business  of  apologetics,  first,  to  vindicate  the  religious  view 
of  the  world  and  judgment  of  life  against  anti-religious  con- 
ceptions; secondly,  to  support  the  superior  content  of  the 
Christian  religion  to  that  of  the  pre-Christian  and  extra-Chris- 
tian religions ;  thirdly,  to  adduce  the  reasons  for  believing  that 
Christianity  is  the  ultimate  religion.  System  requires  that 
this  task  should  be  accomplished  in  the  order  here  indicated. 
But  I  am  not  now  concerned  with  systematic  apologetics, 
and  need  therefore  devote  but  incidental  treatment  to  the 
first  and  second  part  of  this  program,  as  auxiliary  to  my 
main  purpose.     My  purpose  is  to  disengage  the  third  part 


Introduction  9 


from  the  others  and  devote  to  it  an  orderly,  but  not  an 
apologetically  formal,  examination  from  the  point  of  view  of 
modern  culture.  Our  inquiry  is,  as  was  set  forth  a  moment 
ago,  whether  we  may  regard  "Christian"  as  the  permanent 
adjective  by  which  we  must  define  the  growing  ideal  of 
humanity ;  whether,  as  Goethe  puts  it  in  his  wonderful  tale, 
the  Fisherman's  hut  can  widen  into  the  temple  of  the 
Universe. 

It  is  manifest  that  a  discussion  of  this  problem  involves 
a  close  definition  of  the  essential  spirit  of  Christianity.  The 
nature  of  Christianity  has  been  revealed  in  two  historic 
forms:  religion  of  authority,  and  religion  of  the  spirit,'  or  of 
freedom,  or  of  personality,  or  of  the  moral  consciousness  of 
man.  Our  first  duty  is  to  trace  the  rise,  development,  and  dis- 
integration of  Christianity  as  authority-religion ;  our  second  is 
to  define  Christianity  as  religion  of  the  spirit,  with  a  view  to 
determining  whether  the  highest  spirit  of  the  modern  world 
can  and  will  in  the  long  run  call  itself  Christian.  But  religion 
of  the  spirit  is  opposed  by  Naturalism  on  the  one  hand,  as 
by  authority-religion  on  the  other.  The  treatment  will 
accordingly  fall  into  two  sections:  the  first  destructive, 
being  a  criticism  of  supernaturalism  and  naturalism;  the, 
second  constructive.  To  be  sure,  there  will  also  be  a  pre- 
liminary chapter  upon  the  history  of  the  treatment  of  the 
subject  up  to  the  modern  standpoint,  reserving,  however, 
contemporaneous  discussion  for  fuller  examination  under 
our  constructive  endeavor. 

4.  Quite  as  controversial  as  the  main  subject  itself  is  the 
method  by  which  the  problem  is  attacked.  Both  the  religio- 
historicaP  and  the  dogmatic  or  normative^  methods  have 
their  able  representatives.     Is  the  judgment,   "  Christianity 

I  This  was  written  before  Sabatier'a  book  with  this  title  appeared.  See  my 
preface. 

2£.  g.,  Troeltsch.  3  E.  g.,  Kaftan. 


10    The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Religion 


is  the  final  religion,"  a  judgment  of  existence,  or  is  it  a 
judgment  of  value  ?  Must  the  criterion  as  to  which  religion. 
is  the  more  worthful,  which  has  claim  to  unique  validity,  be 
borrowed  from  one's  own  judgment ;  that  is,  from  a  judgment 
which  has  been  Christianly  formed  ?  If  so,  it  is  not  a 
scientific  judgment,  but  an  affair  of  faith.  If  the  judgment 
in  question  be  religio-historical — that  is,  scientific — it  may 
indeed  have  universal  validity,  but  it  is  not  "absolute;"  if 
it  be  a  value-judgment,  it  may  be  absolute  for  him  who 
enacts  it  indeed,  but  cannot  on  that  account  claim  universal 
validity.  While  the  position  of  this  work  is  that  both  the 
methods  in  question  are  indispensable  to  the  fulfilment 
of  our  task — the  religio-historical  to  determine  what  the 
reality  is  in  whose  finality  we  are  interested,  the  normative 
to  evaluate  that  reality— the  ultimate  decision  of  the  matter 
is  an  affair  of  faith  rather  than  of  empirical  science,  and  is 
therefore  the  prerogative  of  the  normative  method.  But  it  is 
just  on  this  account  that  it  is  necessary  to  show  that  a  value- 
judgment  may  also  have  universal  validity.  Inasmuch  as 
this  question  of  method,  however,  is  an  integral  part  of  the 
constructive  task,  the  consideration  of  the  steps  by  which 
one  may  come  to  approve  a  certain  religion  as  the  best  must 
be  postponed  rather  than  treated  at  length  in  an  introduc- 
tion. But  this  brief  reference  to  plan  and  method  may 
satisfy  the  preliminary  need  of  the  reader.  He  will  perceive 
that  my  question  is  not  primarily  that  of  the  passing  and 
the  permanent  in  Christianity,  but,  rather,  whether  there  be 
any  permanent  or  not.  Supposing  the  difficult  task  of  dis- 
tinguishing between  form  and  substance,  principle  and  phe- 
nomena, spirit  and  manifestation,  has  been  accomplished, 
there  still  remains  the  question  as  to  whether  the  finality  of 
the  essential  nature  of  Christianity  can  be  maintained. 

5.  Among  current  problems  in  theology  this  is  one  of  the^ 


Introduction  11 


most  serious  and  important.  Professor  Kaftan  says'  that 
Christianity  stands  or  falls  with  its  conviction  that  it  has 
the  perfect  knowledge  of  God,  so  far  as  that  knowledge  is 
attainable  for  men  who  dwell  upon  the  earth.  Recently, 
reviewing  Harnack's  Das  Wesen  des  Christenthums,  he  again 
declares  that  no  one  of  the  great  forms  of  Christianity  which 
have  successively  arisen  in  the  church  has  ever  been  shaken  in 
its  conviction  of  the  "absolute"  importance  and  significance 
of  Christianity.  "Each  one  of  these  forms,"  he  says  in  so 
many  words,  "has  built  in  one  way  or  another  on  the  Deity  of 
Christ  ....  throug^h  Him  the  Eternal  God  has  become  a 
fact  in  the  history  of  humanity."^  With  this  faith  Chris- 
tianity stands  or  falls,  not  indeed  for  the  individual,  but  as 
concerns  its  existence  and  duration  in  history.  And  Her- 
mann agrees  with  Kaftan's  grave  judgment.  To  the  very 
nature  of  Christianity,  he  says,  belongs  the  conviction  that  it 
contains  the  real  truth  for  all  men ;  as  Christians  we  have  the 
conviction  that  the  essence  of  religion  is  expressed  perfectly 
in  Christianity,  and  in  Christianity  alone.  "Jesus  brought 
into  history  an  ahsolutum,''''  he  declares.  Jesus  is  not  simply 
prophet,  for  a  prophecy  can  continue  without  the  prophet. 
But  Jesus  is  redeemer,  and  redemption  cannot  exist  dis- 
sociated from  the  redeemer.  Jesus  stands  not  simply  upon 
the  summit  of  humanity,  but  over  against  humanity;  and, 
consequently,  Christianity  is  not  the  climax  of  religious 
development,  but  stands  over  against  religion,  as  a  redeemer 
over  against  the  redeemed.  So,  in  substance,  Hermann. 
And  when  Troeltsch,  dominated  in  his  theological  thinking 
by  the  ideas  of  evolution  and  of  historical  relativity,  doubts 
all  this,  Hermann,  like  Kaftan,  replies  that  it  is  a  question 
of  the  life  and  death  of  Christianity,  and  that  if  the  con- 
sistent thinker  (they  do  not  think  that  Troeltsch  is  consistent) 

^Dogmatik,  p.  24.  2  ChristUche  Welt,  1902,  No.  14. 


12    The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

comes  to  occupy  the  position  of  Troeltsch,  lie  will  not  stop 
there,  but  go  on  to  the  naturalistic  monism  of  Haeckel.  These, 
not  to  mention  Fairbairn'  and  others,  are  great  and  represen- 
tative theologians,  and  their  words  may  reinforce  our  sense  of 
the  seriousness  of  the  situation.  At  all  events,  significance 
must  be  attached  to  the  unanimity  with  which  apologists 
assert  that  Christianity  as  a  fellowship  of  believing  Chris- 
tians stands  and  falls  with  the  confession  of  the  revelation 
of  the  living  God  through  Jesus  Christ,  and  thus  with  the 
certainty  of  its  own  absoluteness  and  supernaturalness,  much 
as  we  may  hesitate  with  regard  to  the  demonstrative  value 
of  the  assertion. 

6.  The  justification  for  our  undertaking  this  debate  is  a 
consideration  to  which  attention  must  be  given  at  some  length 
in  these  introductory  remarks,  inasmuch  as  objections  will 
doubtless  be  urged  against  both  the  substance  and  the  stand- 
point of  the  discussion. 

a)  In  our  time  of  interrogation  of  every  belief  which 
solicits  our  adhesion,  of  the  shaking  of  everything  that 
can  be  shaken  in  order  that  those  things  which  cannot 
be  shaken  may  be  seen  to  abide,  the  looming  up  of  our 
question  was  only  a  question  of  time.  The  scientific  impulse 
has  awakened  among  us,  as  it  has  among  every  healthy 
and  intellectual  people;  and  those  who  are  called  to 
realize  this  impulse  feel  themselves  under  the  conscientious 
obligation,  on  behalf  of  truth  and  without  regard  to  con- 
ventions, fears,  or  prejudices,  to  make  everything  an  object 
of  investigation  which  can  be  an  object  of  human  knowl- 
edge. After  its  long  examination  of  nature,  science  is  now 
ordering  all  history  before  its  judgment  seat.  As  science 
requires  the  whole  region  of  nature,  even  that  concerning 
which  the  Sacred  Scriptures  have  expressed  opinion,  so  does 

1  Philosophy  of  the  Christian  Religion  (last  part). 


Inteoduction  13 


it  enter  the  whole  region  of  history,  even  that  in  which  the 
Christian  revelation  has  been  unfolded.  Science  also  judges 
every  form  of  cognition  and  thought;  even  that  which  was 
valid  at  the  time  of  the  bearers  of  the  revelation,  and  which 
determined  their  own  thought  and  discourse.  And  science 
knows  no  other  law  than  its  own  and  no  other  authority  than 
truth.  Thus  it  was  inevitable  that  our  question  should 
arise,  after  the  whole  region  which  we  call  Christianity  was 
inundated.  The  waters  of  criticism  show  no  consideration 
for  values,  but  follow,  like  inundations,  their  own  laws.  This 
inevitability  of  the  onward  march  of  science  is  itself  a 
vindication  of  the  right  to  raise  our  question. 

h)  But  it  is  expected  as  well  that  the  discussion  shall  be  of 
real  service  to  the  modern  religious  interest.  For  one  thing, 
it  should  contribute  toward  the  formation  of  a  theological 
conscience  which  will  insist  upon  scientific  honesty  and 
consistency  in  dealing  anew  with  the  most  difficult  and 
"  dangerous"  questions.  Alms  from  other  sciences  is  no  honor 
to  theology  and  is  no  need  of  religion.  The  true  theologian 
will  not  extend  pity  toward  Christianity  with  its  claim  to 
absoluteness  or  finality,  as  one  sometimes  does  to  an  old 
man  in  his  dotage.  Instead  of  holding  Christianity  to  be  a 
senile  affair,  dependent  upon  forbearance,  the  theologian 
must  approach  his  religion  with  the  most  scientific  exaction 
in  virtue  of  his  own  strong  confidence  in  its  living  power. 
If  the  result  of  his  scientific  reflection  should  be  the  conviction 
that  no  theory  can  retire  the  abstract  possibility  that  Chris- 
tianity may  be  surpassed  somewhere,  sometime,  through  a  still 
profounder  disclosure  of  the  supreme  Keality,  it  would  but 
strengthen  all  of  us  in  the  invaluable  work  of  rendering  to 
science  the  things  that  are  science's  and  to  God  the  things 
that  are  God's.  It  would  then  appear  as  never  before  that 
the  Christianity  with  which  science  With  its  genetic  method 


14    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

has  to  do  is  not  the  whole  of  Christianity,  any  more  than 
the  light  with  which  optics  has  to  do  is  the  whole  of  light. 
And  the  confession  of  the  theologian  that  he  is  not  com- 
petent with  the  instruments  at  his  disposal  to  adduce  scien- 
tific proof  of  the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  demands  of  the  church,  only  disappoints  and 
even  irritates  the  "intellectualists"  indeed,  yet  may  very  well 
turn  out  to  the  furtherance  of  the  gospel.  Theological 
science  now  recognizes  the  limits  of  its  capacity,  as  does 
every  other  science.  We  no  longer  believe  that  science, 
even  though  it  be  theological,  is  in  a  position  to  solve  the 
supreme  questions  and  riddles  of  human  life.  Into  the 
mystery  of  religion  and  of  Christianity  it  is  not  able  to 
penetrate. 

But,  for  another  thing,  a  critical  examination  of  our 
problems  may  fairly  be  expected  to  render,  in  one  particular, 
a  much-needed  service  to  the  ministry.  After  generous 
allowance  has  been  made  for  exceptions — and  this  should, 
indeed,  be  generous — the  ministry,  in  matters  where  science 
has  the  right  to  adjudicate,  is  too  sure  where  science  doubts. 
Veraciousness  of  character,  the  sense  for  truth,  verity  and 
purity  of  personal  conviction,'  courage  and  power  of  dispo- 
sition— these  are  the  great  desiderata  of  the  ministry  in 
modern  culture,  and  these  qualities  can  be  developed  and 
matured,  in  the  case  of  many,  by  encouraging  them  to  face, 

1  Of  the  situation  in  England,  J.  Allanson  Picton  writes  as  follows:  "  The  real 
reason  for  moral  failures  in  education  is  that  we  have  ceased  to  believe  in  the  old 
creeds,  and  have  not  the  moral  courage  to  acknowledge  it  to  ourselves.  Or,  if  we 
acknowledge  it  to  ourselves,  our  case  is  still  worse,  for  we  maintain  a  lying  pretense 
before  others.  Teachers  are  compelled  to  recite  formally,  as  though  they  believed 
them,  Bible  stories  and  professions  of  faith  which  both  intellect  and  conscience 

reject Preachers   delude    themselves    and    their   hearers    with    ingenious 

sophistries  such  as  in  the  market  would  incur  a  charge  of  obtaining  money  under 
false  pretenses.  And  yet,  amid  this  mephitic  atmosphere  of  falsehood,  we  expect  that 
loyalty  of  soul,  and  truth  in  the  inward  parts,  and  simplicity  of  character  shall 
flourish.  Surely  the  time  has  come  when  lies  and  hypocrisy  should  be  swept  out 
from  the  Temple  of  the  Lord.  For  these  choke  prayer  and  make  worship  almost  a 
blasphemy." 


Introduction  15 


at  the  cost  of  honest  pain,  the  scientific  doubt  as  to  the 
finality  and  indispensableness  of  our  Christian  faith.'  It  is 
in  this  connection  that  I  may  anticipate  the  opposition  to 
the  following  critical  dissolution  of  Christianity  as  an  author- 
ity-religion. First,  in  Harald  Hoffding's  somewhat  keen 
remark : 

To  make  religion  a  problem  may  be  offensive  to  many.  But 
thought,  where  it  is  once  awakened,  must  have  the  right  to  investi- 
gate everything,  and  only  thought  itself  can  draw  the  bounds  to 
thought.  Who  else  should  do  this?  He  who  has  espied  no 
problem  has  naturally  no  reason  to  think;  but  such  a  one  has  no 
reason  to  keep  others  from  thinking.  Whoever  fears  the  loss  of 
his  spiritual  house  of  refuge,  let  him  keep  away.  No  one  wishes  to 
rob  a  poor  man  of  his  only  lamb — then  the  poor  man  may  not  need- 
lessly drive  it  along  the  crowded  thoroughfare,  and  demand  that 
traffic  shall  stop  on  his  account.  Moreover,  experience  shows  that 
it  is  the  rams  rather  than  the  lambs  which  loudly  proclaim,  in 
season  and  especially  out  of  season,  that  they  are  offended  and 
scandalized.  It  is  not  so  much  the  really  spiritually  poor  as  it  is  the 
obstinate  and  blustering  ecclesiasts  who  raise  such  a  clamor  when 
free  inquiry  enters  upon  its  rights  to  bestir  itself  in  the  religious, 
as  in  every  other  region.'- 

Secondly,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  retirement 
in  principle  of  Christianity  as  authority -religion  has  been 
brought  about  by  no  single  individual.  Partly,  the  soil  and 
climate  to  which  this  type  of  our  religion  was  indigenous 
have  changed,  and  it  is  on  this  account  that  it  is  ceasing  to 
survive  there,  and  not  because  it  has  been  logically  refuted ;  just 
as  Apollo  and  Minerva  have  perished,  not  through  logical  refu- 
tation, but  through  the  modification  of  the  human  conscious- 
ness out  of  which   these  ideas  sprang.     Partly,  again,  the 

i"Itis  absolutely  necessary  that  the  future  preacher  live  through  in  his  own 
experience  the  whole  critical  inquiry,  historical  and  dogmatic,  that  he  epitomize  in 
himself  the  crisis  of  the  times,  in  order  that  he  may  mature  that  personal  convic- 
tion which  will  enable  him  to  say:  'This  is  mine,  this  have  I  conquered  for  my- 
self.'   Thus  study  has  a  profound  ethico- religious  significance." — A.  Schweitzer. 

2  Beligionsjihilosophit',  pp.  2  f. 


16    The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

retirement  of  authority- religion  has  been  brought  about  by  a 
process  of  immanent  criticism  carried  on  by  our  religion  itself 
in  the  course  of  its  history.  Alien  criticism  on  the  part  of  any 
single  individual  could  be  estopped;  but  the  religion's  own 
self-criticism  is  structural,  and  therefore  irresistible.  With 
the  addition  of  but  little  of  my  own,  I  follow  docilely  along  the 
track  of  this  criticism  as  it  has  been  objectively  consummated 
in  the  course  of  the  centuries,  and  attempt  simply  to  harvest 
the  results.  Thirdly,  the  retirement  of  Christianity  as  author- 
ity-religion is  the  negative  side  of  the  work  of  a  return  to 
the  religion  of  Jesus,  which  was  the  religion  of  freedom,  of 
the  spirit.  The  ultimate  test  of  truth  with  him  was  neither 
authority  nor  speculation,  but  experience.  For  him  life  was 
the  criterion  of  life.  Nothing  is  farther  from  the  truth  than  to 
say  that  he  grounded  his  glad  message  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
on  external  authority.  Nothing  so  little  corresponds  to  his 
procedure  as  a  compulsory  dogma.  Jesus'  grounds  of  faith  are 
all  without  exception  of  a  moral  kind.  He  even  said  that  a 
moral  word  from  Moses  was  worth  more  as  evidential  value 
in  his  gospel  than  if  one  should  rise  from  the  dead.  His 
reasons  are  not  hostile  to  Reason,  but  to  the  dormant  will,  to 
the  antagonisms  of  the  flesh.  With  the  freedom  of  a  prophet, 
and  not  with  the  servility  of  a  Pharisee,  his  whole  attitude 
to  authority  lends  the  most  reassuring  support  to  the  modern 
struggle  for  the  autonomy  of  the  human  spirit  as  against  its 
heteronomy,  whether  the  principle  of  that  heteronomy  be 
declared  to  be  the  Church  or  the  Book.  Fourthly,  it  is 
because  we  have  been  leaning  more  upon  the  historical 
guarantees  of  faith  which  authority  proffers,  than  upon  the 
ever-living  God,  that  every  critical  question  begets  disquie- 
tude and  rancor  in  the  clergy ;  for  it  is  precisely  such  guarantees 
upon  which  the  corrosive  work  of  criticism  is  felt.  Moreover, 
until  we  relinquish  our  authority-religion  in  actual  practice 


Introduction  17 


there  will  be  a  contirmance  of  this  religious  alarm,  which  is 
always  a  characteristic  mark  of  an  age  which  has  become 
partly  sensitive,  partly  fatigued  and  faith-weak.  Fifthly,  it 
may  be  indicated,  finally — what  will  be  apparent  later — that 
Christianity  as  an  authority-religion  is  based  upon  the  old 
static  view  of  reality,  a  Wcltanschauimg  which  is  now  an 
overcome  standpoint;  and  that  Christianity  as  primarily  a 
religion  of  freedom,  of  the  will,  of  the  moral  consciousness, 
belongs  to  the  new  view  of  reality  as  process,  becoming, 
development. 

These  considerations  are  enumerated  to  justify  to  the 
ministry  the  first  negative  section  of  this  book,  even  though 
it  involves  a  retirement  of  clericalism — a  retirement  in  which 
ministers  themselves  should  rejoice. 

One  thing  in  particular  should  be  borne  in  mind.  The 
section  devoted  to  authority-religion  is  rather  the  history  of 
the  logical  than  of  the  historical  criticism  of  the  subject.  It 
is  this  circumstance  which  must  explain  the  absence  of  any 
setting  forth  of  the  relative  justification  of  the  authoritative 
tradition  and  institution  of  the  past  when  viewed  against  the 
background  of  the  history  which  produced  them  and  which 
they  in  turn  served.  Historical  criticism  would  be  thus 
appreciative.  But  logical  criticism  is  concerned,  not  with 
the  historical  value  of  the  system  of  authority,  but  with  its 
inner  consistency  and  with  its  truth  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  modern  view  of  the  world  and  judgment  of  life.  Thus 
the  fulfilment  of  my  task  precludes  an  expression  of  the 
veneration  and  valuation  which  I  accord  to  the  system  of 
religious  control,  with  its  pedagogic  urgency  upon  historic 
life.  Due  attention  to  this  limitation  of  method  in  compassing 
my  end  will  save  from  misunderstanding  and  hostility. 

To  be  sure,  in  all  these  remarks  I  have  not  pushed  the 
liberty   to   criticise   authority-religion   to   its    full   extreme. 


18    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Were  I  to  do  so,  I  should  have  to  point  out  that  the  task  of 
science  is  neither  to  quiet  nor  to  disquiet ;  nor  is  it  its  task 
to  serve  ecclesiastical  preference  or  complacency — the  time 
has  gone  by  when  science  was  constituted  a  handmaid  of 
the  church — but  to  give  honor  to  the  truth.  There  is  a 
courage  of  truth  which  deserves  recognition  because  it  is 
the  fulfilment  of  a  duty.  Of  all  things,  religion  is  not  served 
by  unveraciousness,  to  which,  moreover,  the  diplomatic  veiling 
of  the  truth  belongs. 

From  intelligent  laymen  I  anticipate  less  trouble.  But 
of  three  things  they,  too,  should  be  assured.  First,  "I  have 
never  desired,  nor  do  I  now  desire,  to  disturb  the  contentment 
or  the  faith  of  anyone.  But  where  these  are  already  shaken, 
I  desire  to  point  out  the  direction  in  which  I  believe  a  firmer 
soil  is  to  be  found."*  Secondly,  there  are  historical  situa- 
tions, and  the  present  is  one  of  them,  when  an  unsettled  faith 
is  not  an  unmitigated  evil.  It  belongs  to  that  experience  in 
which  one  makes  the  transition  from  tutelage  to  one's  major- 
ity, from  passive  dependence  upon  tradition,  in  which  one 
simply  has  faith  in  another's  faith,  to  the  active  organization 
of  convictions  of  one's  own.  Faith  is  not  simply  a  gift,  it  is 
also  a  task.  Thus,  it  is  not  simply  the  amount  that  one  be- 
lieves, but  it  is  how  one  comes  hy  his  belief,  and  what  one 
does  with  it,  that  is  decisive  of  character,  even  as  to  have 
eked  the  merest  livelihood  out  of  inhospitable  Scotch  hills 
may  be  both  cause  and  effect  of  more  human  virility  than  to 
have  laid  up  much  goods  for  many  years  from  more  produc- 
tive climes.  Our  age  is  not  one  in  which  faith  can  bulk 
large.  But,  as  it  is  not  the  amount  that  one  gives  that 
makes  one  a  true  giver,  so  it  is  not  the  quantity  that  one 
believes  that  makes  one  a  true  believer.  The  main  thins  is 
one's  interior  attitude  to  the  world  and  to  life,  and  not  the 

1  With  Strauss,  The  Old  Faith  and  the  New,  pp.  9f. 


Introduction  19 


quantum  of  the  credal  output.  Thirdly,  much  spiritual 
distress  will  be  averted  if  one  will  but  learn  to  distinguish 
between  what  is  cause  and  what  is  effect  in  religion.  Psy- 
chologically considered,  we  have  a  series  of  subjective  psy- 
chic states  which  we  call  religion:  feeling  and  need,  fear  and 
hope,  enthusiasm  and  resignation,  joy  and  sorrow.  There  is 
also  a  series  of  objective  doctrinal  traditions  and  religious 
institutions  which  are  likewise  called  religion,  authority- 
religion.  Now,  in  which  is  the  essence  of  religion — in  the 
subjective  religiosity,  or  in  the  historical  objective  elements  ? 
Psychological  and  historical  investigation  yields  the  conclu- 
sion that  it  is  in  the  former.  Religion  in  the  peculiar  sense 
of  the  word  is  a  state  of  the  human  subject.  The  objective 
historical  doctrinal  traditions  and  institutions  are  not  pri- 
marily cause,  but  effect;  are  never  end  in  themselves,  but 
only  means  to  the  end  of  expressing  and  arousing  subjec- 
tive religious  life  in  the  soul.  An  objective  historical  re- 
ligion lives  only  so  long  as  it  finds  confessors.  The  service 
to  the  reader  of  the  subsequent  criticism  of  the  stability  of 
authority-religion  will  depend  largely  upon  the  attention 
which  he  bestows  upon  these  introductory  observations.^ 

7.  If  the  subsequent  discussion  in  its  negation  of  authority- 
religion  may  fail,  because  of  its  destructive  mission,  to  win 
the  sympathy  of  clericalism  at  the  one  extreme,  the  method 
and  conclusion  of  its  construction  in  the  section  devoted  to 

1  "We  live  in  a  time  of  transition.  There  is  a  lack  of  harmony  between  our 
faith  and  our  knowledge  and  life.  To  bring  free  knowledge  and  the  free  unfolding  of 
life  into  harmony  with  that  which  is  of  most  worth,  is  an  inescapable  task.  This  task 
may  not  be  accomplished  in  the  way  of  speculation  and  of  construction.  A  new  type 
of  life  must  be  formed  which  does  not  fear  criticism,  nor  express  its  freedom  by 
mocking  its  fetters,  but,  with  glad  confidence,  expresses  its  deepest  experiences  in 
a  'Psalm  of  Life.'  So  long  as  such  a  type  of  life  is  not  reached,  many  men  will 
suffer  injury  in  their  souls  —  now  cleaving  with  diseased  overtension  to  something 
which  does  not  harmonize  with  their  personal  life  or  with  the  requirements  of 
intellectual  honesty;  now  allowing  their  secret  anxiety  to  drive  them  to  fanatical 
hatred  toward  those  who  do  not  believe  as  they  do;  now  becoming  hyper-critical 
and  blas6;  and  now  consumed  in  restless  reflection.  It  is  not  said  that  those  who 
receive  greatest  injury  also  suffer  greatest  pain."  — Hoffding,  op.  ctt.,  pp.  340,  341. 


20    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

the  religion  of  personality  may  very  well  count  upon  opposi- 
tion from  the  side  of  naturalism  at  the  other  extreme.  Nat- 
uralism allows  room  only  for  demonstrable  knowledge,  not 
for  personal  conviction;  for  existential  judgments,  not  for 
judgments  of  worth.  To  be  sure,  the  witness  of  history 
would  probably  support  the  opinion  that  in  scientific  candor 
and  thoroughness  naturalism  is  superior  to  clericalism.  And, 
indeed,  it  has  its  elements  of  truth  to  which  it  owes  its  spread 
and  popularity.  Briefly  said,  they  lie  in  the  energetic  effort 
to  protect  the  right  of  the  objective  world  against  our  petty 
human  overstrained  subjectivity.  Its  recognition  of  the 
great  orders  pervading  the  whole  cosmos  as  well  as  human 
existence,  and  its  emphasis  of  inexorable  objective  fact  over 
against  subjective  desires,  form  the  inalienable  kernel  of 
truth  of  this  view  of  the  world,  which  must  be  honored, 
moreover,  from  the  Christian  side  also.  One  can  even  say 
that  its  manifest  endeavor  after  the  unvarnished  truth  is  a 
genuinely  Christian  feature,  and,  as  the  development  of 
natural  science  proves,  has  flowered  out  directly  on  the  soil 
of  Christian  civilization.  The  error  of  naturalism,  like  that 
of  materialism,  consists  in  its  approach  to  the  denial  of  spirit 
— in  the  degree  in  which  it  ignores  the  importance  which 
the  thinking  subject  with  its  activities  necessarily  has  for  the 
apprehension  of  the  single  object  as  well  as  for  the  construc- 
tion of  the  whole  view  of  the  world.  And  it  is  but  of  a  piece 
with  this  when  naturalism  denies  the  naturalistic  underiva- 
bility  of  personality.  A  consideration  of  this  point,  which 
would  lead  us  too  far  afield  for  an  introduction,  is  a  prime 
matter  for  discussion  in  a  later  connection. 

So  far  as  our  subject  is  concerned,  naturalism  is  in  the 
right  in  holding  that  Christianity  as  an  historical  reality  is, 
like  every  other  religion,  an  object  of  religio-historical  in- 
quiry.    And  it  is  right  also  in  maintaining  that  there  is  no 


Introduction  21 


other  method  for  the  investigation  of  Christianity  than  the 
general  historico-critical  method,  and  that  no  other  qualities 
are  necessary  in  the  investigator  than  those  required  by 
religio-historical  investigation  in  general.  But  naturalism 
errs  in  refusing  to  recognize  that  the  historical  investigation 
of  Christianity,  like  every  historical  science,  has  its  limits 
precisely  at  the  points  where  the  divinatory  creative  word  or 
the  value-judgment  of  the  investigator  becomes  necessary  in 
order  to  the  vivification  of  the  material  which  has  been  aggre- 
gated in  an  objectively  critical  way ;  and  that  this  is  especially 
true  of  the  investigation  of  the  history  of  Jesus  and  of  the 
apostolic  or  prophetic  Christians  of  all  times.  In  a  word, 
naturalism,  clinging  too  closely  to  natural  science  and  mathe- 
matics in  its  study  of  the  human,  fails  to  do  justice  to  the 
whole  of  the  human,  and  hence  to  the  Christianly  human. 
Thus  if  clericalism  be  false  by  excess,  naturalism  is  false  by 
defect;  and  after  we  have  gone  the  full  length  with  natural- 
ism, the  question  must  still  be  raised  whether  the  last  word 
concerning  single  personalities,  as  concerning  historic  Chris- 
tianity as  a  whole,  must  not  be  metahistorical — a  word,  there- 
fore, which  the  scientific  method  is  not  competent  to  utter. 
Furthermore,  while  its  criticism  of  an  external  revelation  as 
defined  by  clericalism  is  doubtless  well  taken,  naturalism 
fails  to  recognize  at  anything  like  its  true  worth  the  idea  of 
an  inner,  ethico-religious  revelation. 

But  perhaps  the  limits  of  naturalism  may  be  best  indi- 
cated by  taking  a  special  case.  I  refer  to  the  old  question 
of  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus,  or,  positively  expressed,  the 
religio-ethical  perfection  of  Jesus.  The  religious  need  is 
thought  to  require  its  affirmation,  since  it  is  believed  thai 
he  could  not  have  been  mediator  between  God  and  man,  had 
he  lacked  this  perfection.  This  leads  to  the  familiar  con- 
struction  that  Jesus   is    the    embodiment    of  the   ideal  of 


22    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

humanity.  Now,  naturalism  rightly  points  out  that  the 
total  data  of  the  inner  and  outer  life  of  Jesus  are  not  in  our 
possession,  and  that  therefore  our  judgment  in  reference  to 
the  matter  is  founded  on  a  basis  inadequate  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  the  scientific  conscience.  But  it  overlooks  the 
main  point,  namely,  that  the  criterion  of  what  is  sinful  and 
what  is  sinless  does  not  have  its  origin  in  science  as  con- 
strued by  naturalism,  and  cannot  be  employed  by  naturalism 
without  admitting  a  world  of  values  of  which  by  hypothesis 
it  knows  nothing.  Naturalism  thus  can  neither  affirm  nor 
deny  sinlessness.  But  on  that  account  it  cannot  consist- 
ently oppose  another  judgment  on  the  data  which  springs 
from  other  sides  of  the  human  spirit  than  the  merely  theo- 
retical. But  enough  has  been  said  to  indicate  our  purpose 
to  decline  to  accept  uncritically  the  naturalistic  conception 
of  development  and  immanence,  as  also  its  contention  that 
natural  science  is  the  whole  of  science,  and  that  the  natural- 
science  method  can  disclose  the  whole  of  reality. 

To  recapitulate:  After  a  chapter  containing  the  history 
of  thought  on  the  subject,  the  discussion  is  divided  into 
two  parts:  "Authority-Religion  (=  Supernaturalism)  and 
Naturalism,"  and  "The  Finality  of  Christianity  and  the 
Idea  of  Development."  In  the  first  part  the  rise,  develop- 
ment, and  disintegration  of  Christianity  as  authority-religion 
are  traced;  also,  the  history  and  critique  of  naturalism  are 
summarized.  In  the  second  part  the  constructive  task  is 
attacked.  To  this  end  the  respective  merits  of  the  dogmatic 
and  the  religio-historical  methods  are  examined.  Finally, 
in  the  light  of  the  mystery  and  underivability  of  personality, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  evolution,  on  the  other,  the  problem 
of  the  book  is  discussed. 


CHAPTEE  II 
HISTORICAL  SURVEY 

The  old  form  of  the  new  controversy  was  called,  by  a 
title  more  appropriate  than  any  other,  the  perfectibility 
of  revealed  religion.  And  it  seems  advisable  to  introduce 
the  discussion  of  the  new  controversy  by  an  outline  history 
of  the  old. 

Is  revelation  progressive?  From  the  point  of  view  of 
antecedent  probability  opinion  has  divided.  Since  revelation 
had  its  origin  in  the  Most  Perfect  of  all  beings,  the  position 
that  it  was  perfectible  was  in  contradiction  with  the  concept 
of  revelation  and  amounted  to  a  defamation  of  its  origin. 
So  one  party  said.  But  since  revelation  was  divine  instruc- 
tion of  an  imperfect,  developing  human  being,  the  idea  of 
the  perfectibility  of  revelation  seems  to  be  the  truer  one. 
So  the  other  party  said.  And  this  party  could  urge,  as  a 
presumption  in  support  of  its  contention,  the  perfectibility 
of  an  earlier  revelation  by  a  later  in  the  relation  of  the  New 
Testament  to  the  Old.  If  the  Old  Testament  required  to 
be  completed  by  the  New,  is  there  any  antecedent  improba- 
bility that  the  New  Testament  itself  needed  to  be  supple- 
mented by  new  revelations  still? 

Is  the  New  Testament  revelation  capable  of  still  further 
perfecting?  That  was  the  old  problem.  In  favor  of  the 
finality  of  the  revelation,  it  was  urged  that  it  was  such  to 
the  Christian  consciousness;  to  the  latter,  it  was  the  last, 
highest,  definitive.  The  thesis  was  also  supported  by  an 
appeal  to  the  New  Testament  itself.  It  taught  that  the  advent 
of  Christ  was  practically  the  end  of  the  world — an  end  post- 
poned for  a  little,  that  all  peoples  might  know  of  his  arrival, 

23 


24    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

and  be  invited  to  faith.  Before  Christ  all  was  preparatory ; 
he  is  fulfilment.  Beyond  what  was  given  to  humanity  in 
his  person  and  doctrine,  since  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead 
dwelt  bodily  in  him/  nothing  objectively  higher  could  be 
given — no  further  objective  progress  in  revelation  was  pos- 
sible. In  all  the  future  there  can  be  only  subjective  progress 
in  the  appropriation  of  what  was  proffered  in  Christ.  Those 
who  thus  defended  the  finality  of  revelation  quoted  the  great 
words  of  Ephesians:  "Till  we  all  attain  unto  the  unity  of 
the  faith,  and  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God,  unto  a 
full-grown  man,  unto  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  ful- 
ness of  Christ."'" 

But  the  party  of  the  perfectibility  of  the  Christian 
religion  could  quote  Scripture  also.  It  was  thought  that 
the  author  of  the  fourth  gospel  somewhat  transformed  and 
added  to  what  was  delivered  by  Jesus;  that  he  drew  upon  the 
Alexandrian  philosophy  for  this  purpose ;  and  that  he  sought 
to  protect  these  additions  from  the  reproach  of  falsification 
by  saying  that  Christ  himself  pointed  to  a  subsequent  ob- 
jective development^  of  his  teachings — not  denying  that 
Christ  would  still  be  the  principle  of  this  development. 
Jesus  had  been  far  from  able  to  communicate  all  truth  to 
his  disciples,  on  account  of  their  slow  power  of  comprehen- 
sion.* When  he  tried  to  tell  them  of  deeper  things,  they 
did  not  catch  his  meaning.  He  had  to  leave  such  matters 
to  the  Paraklete,^  who  should  be  sent  on  his  own  departure, 
and  who  would  make  clear  to  the  disciples  the  things  that 
Jesus  had  said  and  they  had  not  grasped.  The  Paraklete 
would  also  set  forth  new  truth.* 

Now,  it  was  to  these  Johannean  passages  concerning  the 
Paraklete  that  appeal  was  made  by  those  who   maintained 

1  Col.  2:9.  2Eph.  4:13.  3  John  16: 14. 

*  John  16:12.  5  John  14 :  20.  «  John  IG :  13;  cf.  note  3. 


Historical   Survey  25 

the  legitimacy  and  necessity  of  an  objective  perfectibility  of 
the  religion  founded  by  Jesus. 

One  first  of  all  thinks  of  the  Montanists  in  this  con- 
nection. They  distinguished  four  ages  of  the  church:  the 
period  of  natural  religion  or  the  innate  idea  of  God ;  the 
period  of  the  law  and  the  prophets,  or  the  Childhood  of  the 
Church;  the  period  of  the  gospel,  or  the  Youth  of  the 
Church;  and,  lastly,  that  of  Montanus,  or  the  period  of  the 
Paraklete,  that  is,  the  ripe  Manhood  of  the  Church.  The 
rule  of  Faith,  indeed,  remained  unchanged  and  incapable  of 
improvement.  Further  developments  would  be  mainly  dis- 
ciplinary, though  theoretical  disclosures  were  not  excluded. 
It  is  from  Tertullian,'  "On  the  Veiling  of  Virgins,"  that  we 
gain  most  information  on  this  point: 

The  rule  of  faith,  indeed,  is  altogether  one,  alone  immovable 
and  irreformable;  the  rule,  to  wit,  of  believing  in  one  only  God 
omnipotent,  the  Creator  of  the  Universe,  and  his  Son  Jesus 
Christ This  law  of  faith  being  constant,  the  other  succeed- 
ing points  of  discipline  and  conversation  admit  the  novelty  of  cor- 
rection; the  grace  of  God,  to  wit,  operating  and  advancing  even  to 
the  end.  For  what  kind  of  (supposition)  is  it,  that,  while  the  devil 
is  always  operating  and  adding  daily  to  the  ingenuities  of  iniquity, 
the  work  of  God  should  either  have  ceased,  or  else  have  desisted 
from  advancing?  whereas  the  reason  why  the  Lord  sent  the  Para- 
klete was,  that,  since  mediocrity  was  unable  to  take  in  all  things 
at  once,  discipline  should,  little  by  little,  be  directed  and  ordained, 
and  carried  on  to  perfection  by  that  Vicar  of  the  Lord,  the  Holy 

Spirit What  then  is   the   Paraklete's  administrative  office 

but  this  ....  the  advancement  toward  "  the  better  things " 
(Eccles.  3:1)?     Nothing  is  without  stages  of  growth.     Look  how 

creation  advances  little  by  little  to  fructification So,  too, 

righteousness  —  for  the  God  of  Righteousness  and  of  creation  is 
the  same  —  was  first  in  a  rudimentary  state,  having  a  natural  fear 
of  God :  from  that  stage  it  advanced,  through  the  law  and  the 

1  The  Ante-Nicene  Fathers,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  27  f .  Tertullian,  eccentric  and  rigoristic. 
identified  himself  with  Montanism  about  201  or  202  A.  D.,  and  became  one  of  its  most 
energetic  and  influential  advocates. 


26    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

prophets,  to  infancy;  from  that  stage  it  passed,  through  the 
gospel,  to  the  fervour  of  Youth;  now,  through  the  Paraklete,  it  is 
setthng  into  maturity. 

Again,  in  his  "On  the  Resurrection  of  the  Flesh,"'  Ter- 
tullian  writes: 

Almighty  God,  by  pouring  out  his  spirit  in  these  last  days  {i.  e., 
in  Montanism)  hath  reanimated  men's  faltering  faith;  and  cleared 
from  all  obscurity  and  equivocation  the  ancient  scriptures  of  both 
God's  testaments  by  the  clear  logic  of  their  (sacred)  words  and 
meanings. 

He  goes  on  to  say  that  God  has  now  dispersed  all  the  per- 
plexities of  the  past  through  "the  new  prophecy,  which  de- 
scended in  copious  streams  from  the  Paraklete." 

This  is  the  first  instance  of  a  theory  of  development  which 
assumes  an  advance  beyond  the  New  Testament  and  the 
Christianity  of  the  apostles.  No  criticism  is  offered  here, 
but  the  reader  is  reminded  that  the  theory  jeopardizes  the 
"sufficiency  of  Scripture,"  a  consideration  of  which  Tertul- 
lian  does  not  seem  to  have  been  aware.  The  Catholic 
church  rejected  this  attempt  at  a  further  development  of 
Christian  revelation;  but  not  the  general  theory,  as  her  prin- 
ciple of  tradition,  for  example,  shows.  On  the  contrary,  she 
applied  it.^     Moreover,   according  to  Catholic  doctrine,  the 

1  The  Ante-Nicene  Fathers,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  594, 

2  Vincent  of  L6rium  in  his  "A  Commonitory,"  chap,  zxiii,  says :  "  But  some  one 
will  say  perhaps,  Shall  there,  then,  be  no  progress  in  Christ's  church  ?  Certainly, 
all  possible  progress.  For  what  being  is  there,  so  envious  of  men,  so  full  of  hatred 
to  God,  who  would  seek  to  forbid  it  ?  Yet  on  condition  that  it  be  real  progress,  not 
alteration  of  the  faith.  For  progress  requires  that  the  subject  be  enlarged  in  itself, 
alteration  that  it  be  transformed  into  something  else.  The  intelligence,  then,  the 
knowledge,  the  wisdom,  as  well  of  individuals  as  of  all,  as  well  of  one  man  as  of  the 
whole  church,  ought,  in  the  course  of  ages  and  centuries,  to  increase  and  make  much 
and  vigorous  progress ;  but  yet  only  in  its  own  kind ;  that  is  to  say,  in  the  same  doc- 
trine, in  the  same  sense,  and  in  the  same  meaning."  In  an  apt  and  beautiful  figure 
Vincent  proceeds  to  compare  the  growth  of  religion  in  the  soul  to  the  growth  of  the 
body,  which,  though  in  process  of  years  it  is  developed  and  attains  its  full  size,  yet 
remains  still  the  same.  ( The  Nicene  and  Post-Nicene  Fathers,  second  series.  Vol.  XI, 
pp.  147  f.) 


Historical  Survey  27 

Holy  Spirit  continues  to  work  in  the  church,  and  to  develop 
doctrine  and  institution. 

But  in  the  later  Middle  Ages  this  Catholic  development 
of  Christianity  came  more  and  more  to  be  recognized  as  dis- 
figuration; hence  in  a  part  of  the  Franciscan  order  there 
grew  up  an  Enthusiasm  similar  to  the  old  Montanism.  As 
compared  with  the  profligacy  and  pride  of  the  clergy,  the 
poverty  of  the  mendicant  orders  seemed  alone  to  be  the  per- 
fect life.  Thus  once  again  three  ages  of  the  church  were  dis- 
tinguished: the  carnal  life  till  Christ;  the  half -carnal,  half- 
spiritual,  till  the  time  of  the  mendicant  orders;  finally,  the 
purely  spiritual  age  founded  by  St.  Benedict  and  brought 
to  full  development  by  Franciscans,  especially  Joachim. 
With  the  full  dawn  of  the  age  of  the  Spirit,  which  Joachim 
expected  in  the  year  1260,  the  institutions  of  the  second 
period — church,  papacy,  Monasticism,  humanity  of  Christ, 
sacraments — would  vanish  as  to  form  and  abide  only  as  to 
their  innermost  content.  The  Spirit  of  itself  alone  will 
work  immediately  and  inwardly.  Instead  of  the  outer  his- 
torical gospel,  there  will  be  the  eternal  gospel,  whose 
essence  is  precisely  immediacy,  freedom  from  all  letter.* 
In  his  eloquent  way,  Joachim  declared  that,  as  the  splendor 
of  the  sun  is  to  that  of  the  stars  and  the  moon,  as  the  most 
holy  place  is  to  the  forecourt  and  sanctuary,  as  spirit  to 
letter,  as  law  in  the  heart  to  that  on  tables  of  stone,  so  was 
the  new  eternal  gospel  to  that  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments. The  latter,  therefore,  is  annulled  by  the  former — 
the  three  ages  are  those  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the 
Holy  Spirit.  In  the  last  age  all  figurative  knowledge 
ceases,  and  the  truth  of  the  two  Testaments  appears 
unveiled," 

1  Kael  MOller,  Kirchengeschichte,  Vol.  I,  p.  579. 

2  In  this  connection  appeal  was  made  to  1  Cor,  13:9  f. 


28    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

While  it  cannot  be  denied  that  both  the  Montanistic  and 
the  Franciscan  theory  of  development  were  a  protest  against 
a  false  externality  and  static  finality  of  religion,  and  an 
attempt  toward  a  return  to  a  true  internality,  yet  the  form  of 
this  supposed  new  revelation  was  fantastic,  and  the  content 
was  of  an  enthusiastic,  ascetic  character.  Moreover,  what 
was  mainly  an  objectionable  content  was  brought  to  light  by 
this  supposed  continuation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  ecclesias- 
tical regimes,  namely,  illumination,  independent  of  and 
transcending  the  written  Word  of  God.  According  to 
Luther,  it  was  this  that  the  two  extremes,  orthodox  Catholi- 
cism and  enthusiasm,  had  in  common,^  The  Reformers  were 
of  the  opinion  that  nothing  was  to  be  gained  by  further  new 
revelation.  They  believed  that  any  further  development  of 
Christianity  could  consist  only  in  a  return  to  its  original 
pure  form  in  biblical  Christianity — a  return  which,  accord- 
ing to  extremists,  amounted  to  a  duplicated  and  copied  apos- 
tolic church. 

Thus  the  fountain  of  divine  revelation  which  flowed 
steadily  on  in  the  Catholic  church  had  been  drained  from 
the  Protestant  point  of  view,  and  its  living  water  was  stand- 
ing in  the  vessel  of  Sacred  Scripture.  Later  the  dogma  of 
inspiration  was  elaborated  in  minute  detail;  the  Bible  eo  ipso 
was  divinely  revealed;  the  primitive  form  of  the  manifesta- 
tion of  the  Christian  life  and  doctrine  was  normative  for  all 
subsequent  time;  modern  Christians,  as  compared  with  first 
Christians,  were  assigned  second  rank ;  and  to  live  a  Chris- 
tian life  was  to  imitate  Christ  much  as  the  real  copied  the 
world  of  ideas  in  primitive  Platonism.  Let  the  new  age  and 
the  new  man  be  a  duplicate  of  primitive  Christianity  —  and 
so  ecclesiastical  Protestantism  petrified,  judaized,  external- 

^Art.  Smalcald.,  VIII,  4:  "Quid  quod  etiam  Papatus  simpliciter  est  merus 
onthusiasmus,  quo  Papa  gloritur,  omnia  jura  esse  in  scrinio  sui  pectoris,  et  quidquid 
ipse  in  ecclesia  sua  sentit  et  jubet,  id  spiritum  et  justum  esse,  etiamsi  supra  et  contra 
scripturum  et  vocale  aliquid  statuat  et  praecipiat." 


Historical  Survey  29 


izedj  Thus  in  the  seventeenth  century  ecclesiastical  Protes- 
tantism vied  with  Roman  Catholicism  in  identifying  a 
definite  historical  form  of  the  manifestation  of  Christianity 
with  its  abiding  essence.^  This  identification  of  the  two,  of 
Christianity's  spiritual  essence  with  a  given  historical  mani- 
festation, is  none  the  less  a  perversion  of  the  proper  relation 
between  the  two,  because  it  was  partly  due  to  opposition  to  a 
one-sided  independentism  which  tended  to  dissolve  the  con- 
nection between  the  essential  and  the  historical. 

But  it  was  by  this  one-sided  independentism  that  further 
development  was  effected.  On  account  of  the  stationariness 
referred  to  above,  demand  at  length  arose — nor  could  it  fail 
to  arise — to  uncover  (using  again  the  former  figure)  another 
living  fountain,  which  should  be  all  the  more  free  and  copi- 
ous, albeit  it  was  not  quite  pure  Christianity  that  flowed 
from  it.  This  new  fountain,  in  opposition  to  orthodoxy,  was 
the  human  spirit's  own  self-reflection,  self-exploration.  In 
many  ways  the  stage  of  knowledge  at  which  the  biblical 
writers  lived  was  transcended.  First,  in  secular  matters,  in 
astronomical  and  geographical  knowledge,  and  the  like. 
But,  secondly — so  it  was  set  forth  by  Baumgarten,  Semler, 
and  others,  in  Germany,  and  by  early  deists  in  England — 
the  religious  views  and  teachings  of  biblical  authors  depend 
in  a  measure  upon  the  character  of  their  secular  knowledge. 

1  Instead  of  Protestantism  freely  developing'  by  means  of  the  friction  of  its 
various  confessions,  on  the  one  hand,  and  its  conflict  with  Socinianism  and  Armin- 
ianism  —  i.  e.,  initial  rationalism  —  on  the  other  hand,  it  narrowed  itself  all  the  more 
into  a  rigid  finality,  and  became  a  spiritless,  formal  thing,  an  obstinate,  controver- 
sial theology  which  failed  only  in  speculative  ability  and  ecclesiastical  solidity  of 
perfect  similarity  to  mediaeval  scholasticism.  Toward  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  Pietism  (Spener)  was  an  effort  to  rejuvenate  religion  petrified  in  the 
strait-jacket  of  orthodoxy.  But,  founded  on  feeling  for  the  most  part,  without  solid 
scientific  basis,  dominated  by  scrupulosity  aii  1  illiberality  in  the  practical  life, 
Pietism  was  not  qualified  to  consummate  the  reformation. 

It  was  not  until  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  that  a  new  period  of 
development  was  ushered  in  by  tha  reawakened  philological  and  historico-critical 
investigation  —  the  imnulse  t)  which  originated  not  frmi  within,  but  from  without 
the  church,  from  new  muvoiuuiits  ui  luo  human  spirit  and  new  historical  situations. 


30    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Therefore,  if  the  latter  required  and  was  capable  of  rectifi- 
cation and  perfectibility,  it  could  not  be  otherwise  with  the 
former.  In  order  for  God  to  have  given  to  the  authors  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments  perfect  religious  concepts,  he 
would  have  had  to  transform  their  other  ideas,  the  rest 
of  their  knowledge,  and  thereby  he  would  have  contravened 
the  law  of  his  operations,  discernible  everywhere,  namely, 
the  law  of  successivity.  These  reflections  were  put  forth 
by  Semler,  who,  consequently,  found  in  biblical  revelation 
only  the  beginning  of  the  true  knowledge  of  God,  capable  of 
progressive  perfectibility,  i.  e.,  development. 

Lessing,  in  his  Er^ziehung  des  Menschengeschlechts,^ 
revived  the  Montanistic  comparison  of  the  various  periods  of 
revelation  with  the  various  stages  of  human  life:^  the  Old 
Testament  period  to  Childhood,  the  New  to  Youth,  the  age 
of  reason  to  Manhood.  He  defended  the  Old  Testament 
against  deistic  attacks  on  the  ground  that  its  employment  of 
rewards  and  punishments  was  characterized  by  the  pedagogic 
wisdom  with  which  a  parent  deals  with  a  child.  But  he  also 
held  that  the  Old  Testament  was  an  elementary  book  beyond 
which  the  race  had  passed.  According  to  Lessing,  the  New 
Testament  was  only  a  better  book  of  the  same  kind,  teaching 
the  doctrine  of  immortality  and  future  retribution,  for  exam- 

1 "  Education  of  the  Human  Race." 

2  It  is  remarkable  that  in  Lessing's  day  the  theologian  Teller  independently 
returned  to  the  same  old  mode  of  treating  the  subject ;  for,  according  to  Teller, 
Christianity  has  passed  through  several  stages :  a  first  and  necessary  child-age  of 
unconditioned  faith;  a  second  age  of  rational  Christianity,  for  which  the  apostles 
afford  the  starting-point,  which,  however,  afterward  stopped  half-way  and  misled 
many  to  unbelief;  from  these  two,  by  means  of  progressive  illumination  —  for  man 
can  never  bo  too  much  enlightened  —  the  third  stag©  of  full  knowledge  and  saving 
virtue  was  developed,  a  standpoint  of  manliness  and  majority  which  yet  acknowl- 
edges the  merits  of  the  two  antecedent  epochs.  Teller  was  not  a  deist,  for  he  did  not 
seek  to  pass  back  from  the  historical  and  positive  to  the  natural,  and  did  not  seek, 
in  that  which  precedes,  historical  revelation  and  development,  but  he  permitted 
revelation  to  emerge  through  the  historical  process  itself  — and  the  above  three 
stages  of  revelation  are  the  form  which  his  idea  of  the  perfectibility  of  Christianity 
assumes.  I  may  add  that  Teller's  attention  to  the  general  subject  is  attributed  by 
him  to  the  scattered  thoughts  relating  to  the  subject  in  Semler's  writings. 


Historical   Survey  31 

pie,  on  which  the  Old  Testament  was  silent,  though  the 
latter  revealed  the  unity  of  God.  But  as  the  Old  Testament 
had  been  outgrown,  so  also  would  the  New  Testament  be — - 
not  merely  formally,  by  the  transformation  of  revealed  propo- 
sitions into  truths  of  reason,  but  also  materially,  by  the  dis- 
covery of  nobler  incentives  to  virtue  than  the  future  rewards 
offered  in  the  New  Testament.  In  connection  with  this 
latter  he  found  in  the  mediaeval  idea  of  an  eternal  gospel 
more  than  mere  enthusiasm  [Schwdrmerei).  It  will  come, 
it  will  surely  come,  the  time  of  consummation,  when  man, 
his  understanding  more  and  more  convinced  of  an  ever 
better  future,  will  yet  not  have  to  borrow  from  that  future 
the  motive  to  conduct;  when  he  will  do  the  good  because  it 
is  the  good,  not  because  arbitrary  rewards  are  promised 
which  shall  rivet  and  strengthen  his  inconstant  gaze — the 
inner  reward  is  better.  It  will  surely  come,  the  time  of  the 
new,  eternal  gospel,  which  was  promised  us  in  the  elemen- 
tary books  of  the  New  Covenant.  Perhaps  certain  enthusiasts 
of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  had  received  a  ray 
of  this  new,  eternal  gospel,  and  erred  only  in  announcing  its 
dawn  so  near.  Perhaps  their  threefold  age  of  the  world  was 
not  such  an  empty  vagary,  when  they  taught  that  the  New 
Covenant  must  become  as  antiquated  as  the  Old  had  become.^ 
The  German  Krug^  also  wrote  letters  on  the  perfectibility 
of  the  Christian  religion.  The  Christian  religion  as  con- 
tained in  the  New  Testament  documents  one  cannot  honor 
absolutely,  he  contended,  as  the  ne  plus  ultixi  of  religious  and 
moral  knowledge,  without  doing  violence  thereby  to  reason 
and  even  to  Scripture  itself;  but  one  must  accord  to  this 
religion    necessity   and    capacity   for    further    development. 

1  Die  Erziehung  des  2Ienschengeschlechts,  sees.  85-88.  See  Lessing's  Werke,  Vol. 
XII,  pp.  368  ff. 

2  Brief e  iiber  die  Perfectibilitdt  der  geoffenbarten  Religion,  pp.  10-83.  See  also 
Flatt,  Ideea  einer  Perfectibilitdt  der  gOttlichen  Offenbarung,  and  Tieftrunk.  Die 
Religion  der  MUndigen. 


32    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

And  this  not  merely  in  the  sense  that  the  New  Testament  is 
to  be  more  perfectly  appropriated  subjectively,  both  theoreti- 
cally and  practically,  by  the  individual  Christian  and  by 
Christianity  in  its  entirety,  but  also  in  the  sense  that  the  sum 
of  religious  and  moral  knowledge  laid  down  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament can  and  must  be  rectified  objectively  by  means  of 
further  human  reflection.  According  to  Krug,  there  are  both 
historical  and  philosophical  reasons  for  this:  philosophical, 
because  an  absolutely  perfect  revelation  is  not  possible,  and, 
if  possible,  would  not  be  useful.  Even  Deity  can  communi- 
cate no  absolutely  perfect  knowledge  to  man,  because  it 
must  else  transform  a  finite  spirit  into  an  infinite,  or  vio- 
lently hinder  it  from  using  communicated  knowledge  anew 
in  order  to  the  attainment  of  higher  insight.  Therefore,  the 
concept  of  the  absolute  perfectibility  of  revealed  religion 
contains  a  contradiction  in  itself ;  a  knowledge  communicated 
at  a  given  point  of  time  cannot  be  absolutely  perfect.  More- 
over, that  the  communication  of  an  unimprovable  revelation, 
its  possibility  assumed,  would  yet  not  conform  to  the  end  of 
all  religion,  particularly  the  Christian,  is  easily  shown.  If 
instruction  is  to  bring  true  help,  it  must  be  given  according 
to  the  capacity  of  the  scholar;  consequently,  it  must  pro- 
gress step  by  step  with  the  scholar,  as  his  capacities  and 
knowledge  gradually  develop.  Had  Jesus  really  intended 
to  establish  a  perfect  and  inviolable  religious  norm  for  all 
time — and  here  the  philosophical  reasons  pass  over  into  the 
historical — he  would  have  had  to  set  forth  his  teachings 
differently  from  what  he  did;  not  merely  popularly  and 
occasionally  as  he  did,  but  also,  at  least  to  his  most  trusted 
disciples,  as  a  definite  and  unified  doctrinal  formula.  Add 
to  this — -so  Krug  continues — -that  the  apostles  increased  in 
knowledge  after  the  outpouring  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  that 
the  Scriptures  require  criticism,  and  you  have  pure  proof 


Historical   Survey  33 

that  Jesus  did  not  intend  to  set  up  a  final,  unchangeable 
religious  theory — could  not  and  would  not.  He  was 
appointed  by  God  to  give  the  human  spirit  only  the  first 
impulse,  as  it  were,  to  start  it  in  further  investigation  con- 
cerning religious  and  moral  objects. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  German  Ammon'  took  up  the 
line  of  development.  Ammon  conceived  this  perfectibility 
of  Christianity  more  definitely  as  the  development  of  Chris- 
tianity into  world-religion.  He  deals  with  the  transforma- 
tions which  it  had  to  experience  in  its  transition  from 
exclusively  Jewish  soil  to  pagan,  in  its  contact  with  Greek 
philosophy  and  German  racial  character,  and  the  like.  He 
urges  that  Christianity,  even  in  its  Protestant  form,  is  by  no 
means  the  same  as  the  primitive  Christianity  of  Christ.  In 
all  these  changes  he  found  progress  to  greater  freedom,  and 
he  defined  the  task  of  the  times  in  reference  to  Christianity 
to  be  the  exalting  of  the  ideal  in  Christianity  more  and 
more  above  the  real  and  empirical,  which  hitherto  had  been 
made  the  main  thing.  Not  the  religion,  but  its  doctrinal 
character,  was  changed  thereby.^ 

With  Schleiermacher  reflection  returns  from  the  finality 
of  the  religion  to  the  perfection  of  its  Founder,  as  set  forth 
in  his  discussion  of  the  Person  of  Christ — the  only  dogma, 
in  fact,  which  Schleiermacher's  Gkmhenslehre  (dogmatics) 
contains.  Aside  from  this  dogma,  there  may  be,  indeed, 
valuable  philosophy  in  his  doctrine  of  God  and  of  the  world, 
and  inestimable  critical  contribution  in  his  dissolution  of 
ecclesiastical  doctrinal  formulations;  but  the  really  positive 
side  of  his  work  consists  in  what  he  elaborates  concerninsr 
the  Person  of  Christ.  It  would  not  be  too  much  to  say, 
indeed,  that  Schleiermacher's  Christology  is  the  last  attempt, 

'^  Die  Forthildung  des  Christenthums  zur  Weltreligion,  Vol.  II,  Part  2,  pp.  221  ff. 
Ammon  was  a  critical  Kantian. 

^Ibid.    See  also  preface  to  Vol.  I,  pp.  viii  f. 


34    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

worthy  of  note,  to  make  the  ecclesiastical  Christ  acceptable 
to  the  spirit  of  the  modern  world.  And  though  at  this  point 
our  historical  survey  threatens  to  encroach  upon  the  subse- 
quent main  body  of  our  work,  a  jDrief  reproduction  of 
Schleiermacher's  thought  must  here  be  given. 

Sec.  91  of  his  Olaubenslehre,  being  translated,  is  as 
follows : 

We  have  communion  with  God  only  iu  such  a  living  communion 
with  the  Redeemer  as  that  wherein  his  free  activity  displays  his 
absolutely  sinless  perfection  and  blessedness 

And  sec.  93: 

Since  the  self -activity  of  the  new  collective  life'  is  originally  in 
the  Redeemer  and  issues  from  him  alone,  he  as  historical  individual 
must  be  at  the  same  time  archetypal,  i.  e.,  the  archetypal  must  be 
completely  historical  in  him,  and  every  historical  moment^  of  the 
same  must  contain  the  archetypal. 

As  previously  indicated,  the  writings  hitherto  under 
review  gave  free  expressions  concerning  the  perfectibility  of 
revealed  religion.  But  what  precisely  was  to  be  understood 
as  included  under  perfectibility  was  left  in  obscurity.  It 
seemed  to  be  the  New  Testament  revelation  in  general.  But, 
as  said  already,  we  have  now  come  to  a  time  when  thought 
began  to  be  directed  to  the  consciousness  of  Christ.  Is 
Christ's  consciousness  that  beyond  which  it  is  impossible  to 
pass  ?  It  is  in  the  discussion  of  this  question  that  the 
powerful  influence  of  Schleiermacher  came  to  be  felt.  He 
urged  the  Urhildlichkeit,  consequently  the  Uniibertreff- 
barkeit,^  of  Christ.  But  Schleiermacher  limited  this  Urbild- 
lichkeit  to  the  religious  region,  to  the  God-consciousness  of 

1/.  e.,  the  Christian  community. 

20f  course,  Schleiermacher  uses  "moment"  here  in  its  philosophical  significa- 
tion. Perhaps  I  should  add  that  the  "  archetypicalness  "  (  Urhildlichkeit)  of  Christ 
in  Schleiermacher's  system  takes  the  place  of  "deity"  of  Christ  in  orthodoxy,  and 
of  For6iid,  "  type,"  "  model,"  "example,"  in  rationalism. 

3  "  Unsurpassableness." 


Historical   Survey  35 

Christ,  in  order  to  head  off  the  assumption  that  by  means 
of  the  Urbildlichkeit  attributed  to  him  he  must  have  excelled 
in  all  the  knowledge  and  capability  which  have  been  other- 
wise developed  in  human  society.  This  position  leaves  room 
for  the  rectification  of  (if  need  be),  and  the  advancement 
upon,  Christ's  views  concerning  nature  and  history,  and  also 
for  progress  in  the  adaptability  of  means  in  order  to  the 
actualization  of  his  sentiments  in  the  world.  Schleiermacher 
further  held — agreeing  at  this  point  with  Hegel — that  in 
matters  religious  the  popular  form  of  Christ's  teachings  and 
life  can  and  should  be  surpassed.  But  this  is  only  to  tran- 
scend the  temporal  manifestation,  not  the  essence,  of  his 
religion.  Those  temporal,  and  therefore  limited,  forms  were 
not  competent  to  embody  the  essence  fully.  Hence  the 
more  these  forms  were  shattered  and  better  ones  put  in  their 
place,  the  more  the  essence  would  be  exhibited  in  its  origi- 
nal purity  and  Urbildlichkeit. 

With  Urbildlichkeit  Schleiermacher  also  affirmed  the 
sinlessness  of  Jesus;  that  is,  he  identified  the  personified 
archetypal  perfection  of  the  historical  person  of  Jesus  with 
the  idea  (Idee)  of  sinless  perfection.  The  Person  of  Christ 
is  the  actualization  of  the  idea  of  human  kind  as  such  in  its 
pure  ideality.  It  is  in  this  connection  that  we  have  Schleier- 
macher's  famous  regress  from  the  work  of  Christ  to  his 
Person,  or  from  the  energy  and  constancy  of  God-conscious- 
ness in  the  Christian  community  to  the  essential  sinlessness 
(UnsudlichkeH)  and  archetypal  religious  perfection  of 
Christ.  Schleiermacher  apprehends  the  historical  person 
of  Jesus  immediately  as  itself  the  personified  idea  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  then  passes  from  the  human  perfection  of  Jesus 
to  his  absoluteness.  One  might  formulate  Schleiermacher's 
procedure  as  follows:  Given  Jesus  as  a  full  and  real  human 
being — as  against  the  church's  Christ  with  an  abbreviated 


36    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

humanity;  required  to  appropriate  in  a  rational  way  those 
characteristics  from  the  church's  Christ  which  are  necessary 
if  he  is  to  continue  to  be  our  divine  redeemer  and  arche- 
type. This  absoluteness,  as  set  forth  in  Schleiermacher's 
Christology,  is  the  last  thread  which  fastens  the  modern  to 
the  old-church  apprehension.  But  this  is  not  the  place  to 
show  that  Schleiermacher's  "Redeemer"  was  not  the  "God- 
man"  of  the  church,  nor  was  he  the  historical  Jesus  of 
modern  science  —  much  as  it  is  due  to  Schleiermacher  that 
for  the  nonce  Christ  was  viewed  as  a  man  in  the  full  sense 
of  the  word,  as  modern  culture  demanded,  and  yet  as  divine 
Redeemer,  object  of  faith  and  worship  for  all  time,  as  tradi- 
tional piety  desired.  Historical  criticism  has  corroded 
Schleiermacher's  portrait  of  the  Christ  quite  as  thoroughly 
as  his  criticism  disintegrated  in  principle  the  ecclesiastical 
portrait.  Henceforth,  critical  elaboration  of  the  historical 
life  of  Jesus  is  to  be  the  test  of  the  dogma  of  the  Person  of 
Christ.  Schleiermacher's  Christ  is  as  little  a  real  man  as  is. 
the  Christ  of  the  church;  critical  examination  of  the  gospel 
brings  us  no  nearer  to  Schleiermacher's  Christ  than  it  does, 
to  the  church's  Christ.' 

But  instead  of  thus  anticipating,  let  us  turn  rather  to 
Hegel's  conception  of  the  absoluteness  of  Christianity. 
Listening  to  many  voices  out  of  the  past,  and  especially  to 
Schelling  out  of  the  present,  Hegel  attempted,  among  other 
things,  a  speculative  reproduction  of  the  dogmas  of  the 
church.  With  these,  and  especially  with  Schelling,  he  sought 
to  show  how  the  Christian  religion  is  related  to  the  idea  of 
divine  immanence  in  the  world.  The  Hegelian  speculation 
combined  two  ideas  which  apparently  exclude  each  other— 

1  Still  it  is  the  imperishable  merit  of  Schleiermacher  to  have  made  for  our  cen- 
tury the  christological  problem  a  specifically  religious  problem.  His  exposition  of 
the  doctrine  of  Christ's  Person  in  sees.  93  ff.  of  his  Glaubeiislehre,  where  he  says 
that  "die  stetige  Kraftigkeit  seines  Gottesbewusstseins,  welche  ein  eigentlichers. 
Sein  Gottes  in  ihm  war,"  is  perhaps  his  most  abiding  contribution  to  theology. 


HisTOKioAL  Survey  37 

"absolute"  and  "process."  In  the  history  of  thought  it 
had  been  the  custom  to  conjoin  "absolute"  and  "substance," 
"absolute"  and  "person,"  "absolute"  and  "principle;"  but 
modern  speculation  has  given  us  "absolute  process."  But 
that  which  is  in  process  is  spirit,  and  the  essence  of  the 
absolute  spirit  is  idea,  thought.  It  is  in  the  finite  spirit 
that  God  arrives  at  a  consciousness  of  himself,'  first  in 
unclear  feeling,  then  in  idea  where  the  thought  is  still 
restricted  to  sensible  pictures  and  images  —  /.  e.,  religion  in 
the  form  of  popular  metaphysics  or  of  dogmas — finally  in 
thought.  In  philosophy  and  religion  there  is  the  same  con- 
tent: the  unity  of  the  absolute  and  the  finite  spirit.  But 
Christianity  is  the  religion  in  which  this  process  of  unifica- 
tion has  attained  its  consummation,  and  is  therefore  the 
absolute  religion — especially  at  the  stage  in  which  it  is 
constructed  into  the  absolute  philosophy,  which  is  Hegel's. 
The  dogmas  of  the  church  are  converted  into  metaphysical 
concepts.  Thus  the  Hegelian  philosophy  looked  for  the  truth 
of  religion  in  logical  and  metaphysical  categories  rather 
than  in  the  facts  and  experiences  of  feeling  (Schleiermacher), 
and  in  volition  (Kant).  Corresponding  to  the  centrality  of 
the  dogma  of  the  incarnation  of  the  divine  Logos  in  Chris- 
tianity, we  have  the  culmination  of  the  self-actualization  of 
spirit  in  humanity.^ 

1  In  Hegel's  Phenomenolopie  —  e.  g.,  pp.  14,  15,  24  — his  point  is  plainly  this: 
Th  3  absolute  is  essentially  resultant,  is  what  it  is,  in  fact,  first  at  the  end,  and  its 
nature  consists  in  its  self-becoming.  The  self-consciousness  of  the  absolute  Spirit 
is  religion.  Religion  is  the  divine  Spirit's  knowledge  of  itself  through  the  media- 
tion of  the  finite  spirit.  Thus  —  so  one  might  conclude  — religion  in  the  last  analysis 
is  not  an  affair  of  man,  but  it  is  essentially  the  supreme  determination  of  the  absolute 
Idee  itself,  so  far  as  it  has  to  flnitize  itself  in  order  to  become  knowledge  of  its  own 
self  through  this  finitization. 

2  That  Pfleiderer's  system  deviates  from,  and  in  some  ways  is  independent  of, 
Hegel's,  may  be  seen  from  the  following:  "As  there  is  no  essential  relation  between 
these  metaphysical  ideas  and  the  person  of  Jjsus,  he  is  made  arbitrarily,  as  anyone 
else  might  have  been,  an  illustration  and  example  of  absolute  idea  to  which  he 
stands  in  no  more  intimate  relation  than  the  rest  of  the  human  race;  whereby  the 
special  historical  importance  of  the  originator  of  the  Christian  community,  and  of 


38    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Finally  Strauss  appears  upon  the  scene.  Taking  up 
Schleiermacher's  Christology,  he  urges  that  from  the  stand- 
point of  modern  science  valid  considerations  may  be  adduced 
against  it.  For  one  thing,  it  is  hard  to  draw  the  line  between 
what  does  and  what  does  not  belong  to  religion,  in  the  claims 
of  Jesus.  The  imperfection  of  his  other  knowledge  — 
knowledge  physical,  metaphysical,  historical — his  faith  in 
angels,  demons,  in  a  heaven  above  and  a  hell  below — these 
views  could  not  be  held  by  Jesus,  so  Strauss  thinks,  without 
their  exercising  a  corrupting  influence  even  on  what  was 
peculiarly  religious  in  his  experience.  For  another  thing, 
the  ideality  of  Jesus  for  mankind  in  all  time  and  space  is 
impossible  on  the  grounds  of  the  particularity  and  historical 
conditionateness  of  Jesus  as  a  man  living  in  a  given  time 
and  place.  Furthermore,  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus  is  not 
only  historically  undemonstrable  in  the  nature  of  the  case, 
but  inconsistent  with  the  position,  indispensable  to  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  that  Jesus  was  a  true  and  real  man  who  passed 
through  a  true  and  real  human  development.'  As  against 
Hegel,  Hegelian  that  he  was,  he  maintained  that  the  distinc- 
tion between  an  essence  that  would  be  something  other  than 
the  totality  of  its  phenomena  is  illogical;  and  consequently 
the  prerogative  of  being  ne  plus  ultra  for  all  time  must  be 
denied  every  historical  personality  without  exception.  "The 
idea,"  he  says,  thinking  of  Hegel,  "does  not  shake  out  its 
full  content  in  a  single  exemplar!"  While  Hegel  in  his 
Phenomenologie  had  professed  his  belief  in  the  absoluteness 
of  Christianity,  he  had  also  taught  that  the  Christian  spirit 
is  only  one  form  of  the  manifestation  of  the  absolute  spirit. 

the  first  model  of  its  religious  and  moral  life,  is  not  only  left  without  explanation, 
but  is  lost  altogether  — a  result  which  not  only  does  violence  to  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, but  is  unsatisfactory  to  historical  science." — Pfleidekee,  Introduction 
to  Steauss,  Life  of  Jesus,  p.  xviii. 

1  Soe  "  Der  Christus  des  Glaubens  und  der  Jesus  der  Geschichte :    Eine  Kritik 
des  Schleiermacher'schen  Lebens  Jesu,"  in  Vol.  V  of  Steauss's  Oesammelte  Schriften. 


Historical   Survey  39 

But  in  that  case  the  absohite  spirit  could  have  like  forms  of 
manifestation  after  Christianity  as  well  as  before  it.  That 
such  will  not  be  the  case  dare  not  be  assumed,  Strauss  said, 
but  must  be  proved — proved  "better  than  Hegel  has  done 
in  his  self-  and  system-contradictory  designation  of  Chris- 
tianity as  the  absolute  religion." 

Logically,  "Strauss  closes  the  discussion  of  the  problem 
in  its  old  form.  In  1871  he  published  the  sad  testament  of 
his  final  thought,  his  last  book.  The  Old  Faith  and  the  New. 
There  Strauss  exhibited  Christianity  in  the  form  created  by 
traditional  dogma.  Confounding  Christian  religion  and 
ecclesiastical  dogma — or,  better,  in  oblivion  to  Christianity 
as  religion  of  the  spirit,  of  freedom  and  personality,  treating 
the  Christian  religion  as  coincident  with  ecclesiastical 
authority-religion — he  raised  the  question:  "Are  we  still 
Christians?"  and  answered  it  in  the  negative.' 

And,  as  we  shall  see,  if  Strauss  was  right  in  his  idea  of 
Christianity,  he  was  also  right  in  his  answer. 

In  recent  years  the  problem  has  been  revived  in  theologi- 
cal Germany,  where  the  writings  and  addresses  upon  the^ 
many  phases  of  the  subject,  both  scientific  and  religious,, 
have  been  characterized  by  unusual  intensity  of  feeling  andl 
breadth  of  scholarship.  This  revival  of  the  discussion  is 
due  to  the  embarrassment  into  which  apologetic  theology 
has  been  precipitated  by  the  aggression  of  religio-historical 
inquiry  and  the  obtrusion  of  the  religio-historical  method 
into  its  work.  That  inquiry  has  stimulated  a  desire  on  the 
part  of  many  for  a  new  religion  adapted  to  raze  the  decaying 
structure  of  the  old  faith.  Others  think  that  they  have 
found    a    substitute    for    Christianity    in    Brahminism,    or 

1 "  My  conviction,  therefore,  is,  if  we  would  not  evade  difficulties  or  put  forced 
constructions  upon  them,  if  we  would  have  our  yea,  yea,  and  our  nay,  nay;  in  short, 
if  we  would  speak  as  honest,  upright  men,  we  must  acknowledge  we  are  no  longer 
Christians."— 3'/ie  Old  Faith  and  the  New,  p.  107. 


40    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Buddhism,  or  "  theosophical  religion,"  or  similar  forma- 
tions. 

More  important  still,  professional  teachers  of  the  church 
in  Germany  declare  that,  as  the  result  of  the  religio-histori- 
cal  labor  of  our  time,  the  claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the 
absolute,  the  true,  the  final  religion,  unsurpassable  and  in- 
comparable, is  open  to  grave  doubt.  They  compare  Jesus, 
subsuming  him  under  the  category  of  ''religious  personal- 
ity," with  all  other  geniuses  of  religious  history.  They 
apply  the  laws  of  religious  development — laws  discovered 
elsewhere — to  Christianity  and  to  the  history  of  the  reli- 
gious life  mirrored  in  the  Bible.  And  they  conclude  that  all 
history  is  flux,  is  movement,  development,  and  that  religious 
history  presents  the  picture  of  an  incessant  process  of  purifi- 
cation. Hence  the  claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the  climax  and 
close  of  all  is  to  be  at  least  re-examined ;  all  the  more  so  since 
every  religion  claims  to  rest  on  revelation,  self-communication 
of  Deity.  Moreover,  the  culture  of  a  country  and  age  pro- 
foundly atfects  the  religious  life  indigenous  thereto.  Per- 
haps, then,  our  modern  cultural  epoch  also  requires  a  new 
religion,  or  at  all  events  a  radical  reformation  of  Christianity. 

Thus  questions  crowd  anew  upon  German  scholars.  The 
work  of  religious  history  is  disquieting.  A  weakening  fear 
whether  Christianity  is  tlie  religion  and  Christ  the  one 
Savior,  beside  whom  there  is  none  other,  has  taken  posses- 
sion of  men's  souls. 

Two  ways  of  resolving  the  difficulty  have  suggested 
themselves  to  the  bearers  of  the  religious  interests  of  Ger- 
many. The  one  is  to  contest  the  right  of  religious  history 
in  theology.  It  is  more  in  accord  with  strength  of  faith 
and  Christian  self-certainty  to  say  that  Christianity  is  self- 
dependent,  and  must  be  understood  out  of  itself,  i.  e.,  from 
the  standpoint  of  Christianity.     What  Christianity,  consid- 


HiSTOEiCAL   Survey  41 

ered  as  religion,  signifies  to  our  hearts,  is  independent  of 
the  religious  historian,  if  not  inaccessible  to  him.  Not 
assailing  the  element  of  truth  in  this  consideration,  others 
see — and  see  rightly — that  it  yet  does  not  follow  that  the 
theologian  concerned  with  putting  Christianity  into  right 
relations  with  the  phenomena  of  our  sciences  and  our  civili- 
zations may  be  indifferent  to  the  facts  of  religious  history 
simply  because  they  are  embarrassing  to  his  presuppositions. 
It  would  seem  to  amount  to  a  jiractical  surrender  of  the 
universal  validity  of  Christianity,  in  the  very  moment  of  its 
theoretical  defense,  to  conceive  thus  that  it  is  not  possible, 
with  a  good  conscience,  to  hold  to  the  superiority  of  the 
Christian  religion  to  all  others  over  and  against  the  simple 
facts  of  religious  history.  It  is  only  the  unenviable  pre- 
rogative of  the  Catholic  church  to  close  its  eyes  in  this 
manner  to  those  apologetic  problems  and  burdens  which 
God  in  his  providence  has  laid  athwart  our  path. 

But  more  heroic  German  scholarship  has  supported 
another  way  of  approaching  the  difficulty.  May  we,  per- 
haps, be  able  to  forego  the  claim  to  the  absoluteness  of 
Christianity,  and  thus  escape  the  whole  problem?  Can  we 
not  simply  grant  that  Christ  is  one  beside  others,  or,  rather, 
primus  inter  pares;  that  "Christianity  is  the  most  vigorous, 
most  concentrated,  revelation  of  religious  energy,  among  all 
religious  upheavals"  ?'  Do  we  thus  sacrifice  anything  essen- 
tial to  Christianity,  or  do  we  not  thus  do  justice  to  its 
peculiarity  which  we  cannot  forego? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  come  here  to  the  kernel  of  the 
question.  Everything  depends  upon  the  meaning  of  the 
absoluteness^  or  finality  which  we  would  vindicate  to  Chris- 

iTeoeltsch,  oiJ.  cit.,  p.  77. 

2  It  was  the  fashion  a  generation  or  two  ago  among  Unitarians  to  describe 
Christianity  as  the  "absolute  religion,"  on  the  foundation  of  the  ancient  command- 
ments interpreted  in  their  universal  sense  as  love  to  God  and  love  to  man.  So 
Theodore  Parker,  e.  gr.,  contended. 


42    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

tianity,  of  the  necessary  presupposition  of  the  Christian  faith 
in  Christ  in  this  connection;  depends  also  upon  what  way  we 
would  secure  to  the  results  of  religious  history  their  rights 
in  the  matter.  So  the  representatives  of  this  second  stand- 
point urge.  In  the  constructive  part  of  the  present  work 
the  influence  of  their  great  debate  will  be  detected  by  the 
well-informed  theologian  on  every  page,  where  arguments 
are  reproduced  and  weighed,  and  an  independent  position, 
related  now  negatively,  now  positively,  to  their  discussion, 
is  reached,  but  not  without  grateful  obligation  to  their  learn- 
ing and  leadership. 

A  brief  statement  of  the  literary  output  of  that  debate 
may  be  of  service  to  the  reader.  Professor  Ernst  Troeltsch, 
of  Heidelberg,  is  the  central  figure  and  has  shown  most 
interest  in  the  right  of  religio-historical  work,  as  the  title  of 
his  book  indicates:  Die  Ahsolutheit  des  Christenthums  und 
die  ReligionsgescliicMe}  He  broached  the  subject  in  his 
previous  writings:  "Die  christliche  Weltanschauung  und 
die  Gegenstromungen,"^  "  Die  Selbstandigkeit  der  Religion," 
and  "Geschichte  und  Metaphysik."^  In  the  beginning  of 
his  development,  Troeltsch  was  ready  to  grant  with  a  good 
degree  of  confidence  a  Sonderstellung — /.  e.,  a  place  by  itself 
and  apart — to  Christianity  in  the  total  phenomenon  of  reli- 
gion; but,  pressed  by  his  opponents,  especially  by  Professor 
Julius  Kaftan,  of  Berlin,  in  his  articles  "  Die  Selbstandigkeit 
des  Christenthums,"  and  "Erwiderung:  (1)  Die  Methode; 
(2)  Der  Supernaturalismus,"*  he  was  subsequently  on  the 
point  of  abandoning  the  concept  of  absoluteness  as  "dog- 
matic." Nevertheless,  he  is  now  inclined  again  to  maintain, 
and  to  seek  to  prove,  that  Christianity  is  the  absolute  religion.^ 

1  Tabingen  und  Leipzig,  1902.        "^Zeitschrift  fur  Theologie  und  Kirche,  1893-94. 
3  Ibid.,  189.")-96,  and  1898.  *  Ibid.,  1896  and  1898. 

^  Theologischer  Jahreshericht,  Vol.  XVIII,  p.  510;  Theologische  Arbeiten  des 
Rheinischen  wissenscluifUichen  Prediger-Vereins,  N.  F.,  Vol.  No.  4,  p.  103. 


Historical   Survey  43 

This  fluctuation  indicates  the  conscientiousness  of  the  investi- 
gator who  is  ready  to  revise  his  position  ever  anew.  It  may 
also  illustrate  perhaps  that  one  allows  himself  to  be  driven 
too  far  afield  from  connection  with  the  collective  Christian 
consciousness,  when  one  alienates  from  Christianity  its  char- 
acter as  absolute  religion  reposing  on  revelation.  It  would 
seem  to  be  due  to  this  feeling  that  other  opponents  have 
arisen  against  Troeltsch;  e.  g.,  Reischle/  "Historische  und 
dogmatische  Methode;"  Traub,^  "Die  religionsgeschichtliche 
Methode  und  systematische  Theologie,"  and  Wobbermin/ 
"Das  Verhaltnis  der  Theologie  zur  modernen  Wissenschaft 
und  ihre  Stellungf  im  Gesamtrahmen  der  Wissenschaft."* 
Mention  should  be  made  of  the  important  discussions  by 
Professor  Harnack/  in  his  Die  Aufgabe  der  theologischen 
Facultdten  und  die  allgemeine  Religionsgeschichtej^  Nieber- 
gall,  Ueher  die  Absolidheit  des  Christenthums;^  Heinrici, 
Diirfcn  wir  noch  Christen  hleihen?^  Adolf  Jiilicher,  Moderne 
Meinungsverschiedenheiten  iiber  Methode,  Aufgahen  und 
Ziele  der  Kirchengeschichte;^  and  Ihmels,  Die  Selhstandig- 
keit  der  Dog  mat  ik  gegenuber  der  Religionsphilosophie. 
With  the  exception  of  Jtilicher,  these,  from  different  stand- 
points, are,  with  varying  decisiveness,  opponents  of  Troeltsch 
in  the  controversy. 

1  Theologische  Rundschau,  1901. 

^  Zeitschrift  fur  Theolojie  und  Kirche,  1901.  3  ibid. 

■•Recently,  Theologische  Arbeiten  der  Bheinischemoissenschaftlichen  Prediger- 
Vereins,  N.  F.,  No.  5. 

5  In  criticism  of  Harnack,  J.  Estlin  Carpenter,  in  Christianity  and  the 
Religions  of  the  World,  p.  107,  writes:  "  It  is  claimed  for  Jesus  that  he  is  net 
one  master  among  many,  but  the  Master;  his  religion  is  'the  religion,'  or,  as 
one  might  say,  religion  itself,  final  and  complete.  If  this*,  plea  be  preferred 
as  a  reason  for  neglecting  the  study  of  other  great  manifestations  of  thj 
religious  consciousness,  because  India  or  China  can  teach  us  nothing  ....  if  it 
means  that  we  are  to  turn  our  backs  on  Plato  and  ignore  Wordsworth,  it  must  be 
disowned.  If  it  implicitly  affirms  that  no  seer  to  come  may  rise  to  still  greater 
heights  of  insight  or  character,  once  more  it  must  be  rejected,  for  one  cannot 
employ  the  achievements  of  the  past  to  limit  the  possibilities  of  the  future. 

«  Giessen,  1901.  i  Tubingen  und  Leipzig,  1900.  8  Leipzig,  1901. 

9Erlangen  und  Leipzig,  1901. 


44    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Troeltsch's  own  contention  may  be  summarily  reproduced 
as  follows:  In  chap.  1  he  sets  out  with  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  the  theory  of  the  absoluteness  of  Christianity. 
Christianity  has  been  drawn  into  the  stream  of  religious 
evolution  by  modern  historical  science.  Therefore  effort  is 
made  to  safeguard  the  normative  validity  of  Christianity  as 
the  perfect  actualization  of  the  concept  of  religion  or  as  the 
"absolute  religion."  Thus  the  evolutionistic  apologetics,  as 
presented  from  different  sides  by  Schleiermacher  and  Hegel, 
is  closely  related  to  the  orthodox-supernatural  apologetics. 
Chap.  2  gives  a  critique  of  this  construction  of  Christianity 
as  absolute  religion.  The  basic  concept  is  erroneous:  a 
universal  concept  of  religion  is  exalted  to  norm  or  ideal,  and 
treated  at  the  same  time  as  impelling  power  in  the  historical 
life  of  the  individual.  This  substitution  has  shown  in  its 
results  that  it  is  impossible.  Moreover,  the  proof  of  an 
"absolute"  realizing  of  the  universal  concept  in  historical 
development,  especially  in  Christianity,  which  manifests 
itself  in  all  its  phases  in  historical  particularity,  has  mis- 
carried. Besides,  the  concept,  dominating  this  whole 
structure  of  thought,  of  a  development,  and  of  a  unitary 
gradual  development  at  that,  causal  and  teleological  at  once, 
has  proved  to  be  equally  false.  But  then,  again,  the  eo 
ipso  correct  opposition  to  the  universal  concept  and  its 
employment  as  norm  has  only  led  many  precipitately  to 
erect  concrete  Christianity  to  the  dignity  of  a  norm  for  all 
religion.  In  the  place  of  all  these  efforts,  chap.  3  urges  the 
full  recognition  of  relativism,  but  also  of  its  limitation  at 
the  same  time.  There  is  no  objection  to  the  expression — ■ 
none  to  saying  that  Christianity  is  a  "relative  phenomenon," 
that  it  ever  sustains  definite  historical  relations.  But  we  do 
not  thus  fall  into  boundless  and  aimless  relativism.  The 
thought    of   relativity    by    no  means  excludes  a  valuation 


Historical   Survey  45 

( Wertung)  of  historical  phenomena.  Such  valuation  shows, 
however,  that  only  a  few  great  generic  types  of  the  spiritual, 
especially  of  the  religious,  life  come  into  consideration  as 
really  worthful,  or  through  which  abiding  values  are  won, 
but  also  that  they  can  be  subordinated  to  the  idea  of  a  com- 
mon normative  goal,  and  may  be  considered  as  tendencies 
converging  to  such  goal.  The  idea  of  development  can  be 
employed  in  this  sense  also.  But  in  doing  so  one  must  forego 
the  absolute  actualization  of  the  concept.  Chap.  -4  shows 
that,  on  the  basis  of  this  strictly  historical  mode  of  treatment, 
a  justification  of  Christianity  as  the  highest  religious  truth, 
valid  for  us,  is  possible.  Comparison  of  various  religions 
indicates  that  Christianity  is  the  acme  of  previous  religious 
history,  at  the  same  time  being  the  point  of  convergence  of 
all  known  developmental  tendencies  of  religion.  In  this  way 
it  is  made  extremely  improbable  that  it  will  ever  be  outclassed. 
Room  is  thus  prepared  for  the  faith,  transcending  science, 
that  we  really  possess  in  Jesus  Christ  communion  with  God, 
and  his  salvation,  and  therefore  are  bound  to  him  for  all 
time.  In  what  sense,  then,  may  we  speak  of  the  absoluteness 
of  Christianity?  Chap.  5  is  devoted  to  this  question. 
Naive  absoluteness  is  peculiar  to  the  religious  life.  In  the 
case  of  Jesus  this  naive  absoluteness  is  nothing  but  the 
consciousness  of  his  mission;  in  the  case  of  the  Christian, 
nothing  but  the  consciousness  of  his  uplift  to  fellowship 
with  God.  The  Christian  religion  may  rightly  share  this 
claim  to  absoluteness  with  other  religions.  But  when  one 
seeks  to  monopolize  this  claim  to  absoluteness,  in  opposition 
to  claims  of  other  religions,  by  the  use  of  supernatural, 
rational,  or  evolutionistic  views,  one  finds  on  his  hands  only 
an  artificial  product  which  collapses  before  the  energy  and 
rigor  of  historical  science.  These  scientific  authentications 
of  an  exclusive  absoluteness  must  yield.     What  remains? 


46    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

On  the  one  hand,  faith  which  surrenders  with  naive  absolute- 
ness to  the  power  of  Jesus  and  lives  in  God  through  him ; 
on  the  other,  scientific  comparative  religion,  which,  however, 
can  accord  to  Christianity  only  the  first  place  among  the 
religions  which  have  hiiherio  appeared  upon  the  broad  plain 
of  human  history.     So  Troeltsch. 

As  Kaftan  is  the  best-known  opponent  of  Troeltsch,  it 
may  be  desirable  to  reproduce  the  main  features  of  his 
position.  It  is  as  follows:  The  gist  of  the  controversy,  he 
says,  is  as  to  whether  the  method  and  results  of  the  science 
of  religious  history  are  compatible  with  the  further  judgment 
that  Christianity  is  the  only  true  religion.  The  controversy 
is  not  exactly  new;  only  there  is  a  new  way  of  employing 
religious  history  on  the  part  of  modern  theology  and  phi- 
losophy of  religion.  The  old  dogmatic  prepossession  of  the 
sole  truth  of  Christianity  is  declared  to  be  remedilessly 
undermined  thereby.  Kaftan  makes  two  concessions,  (a) 
The  old  view  which  knows  only  pagan  error  and  idolatry 
besides  Christianity  (and  Judaism)  is  not  compatible  with 
the  findings  of  religious  history,  to  which  it  is  incumbent 
upon  us  to  readjust  ourselves.  But  we  have  Christian  prece- 
dent for  this.  The  ancient  church  saw  in  Hellenic  philoso- 
phy a  preparation  for  Christianity.  So,  similarly,  we  today 
may  look  upon  the  religious  development  of  humanity  from 
the  positive  point  of  view  of  a  truth  in  process  of  becoming, 
and  of  a  divine  preparation.  (6)  It  is  further  correct  that 
the  proposition,  Christianity  is  the  only  true  religion,  does 
not  admit  of  demonstration  religio-historically ;  just  as  little 
as,  or  even  less  than,  it  can  be  proved  by  mere  historical 
means  that  Christianity  is  the  highest  form  of  religious  life. 
But  when  it  is  said — Kaftan  now  taking  the  offensive  — 
that  the  religio-historical  method  is  competent  to  exclude 
Christianity  from  being  specifically  distinguished  from  all 


Historical   Survey  47 

other  religions,  it  must  be  pointed  out  that  this  is  an 
exaggeration.  Other  such  exaggerated  inferences  have  been 
wont  to  attach  themselves  to  the  advancement  of  scientific 
investigation.  Thus,  its  advocates  declare  materialism  to 
be  the  pure  and  necessary  result  of  the  natural-science 
method.  Thus,  too,  there  was  a  time  when  they  believed 
that  they  could  transform  morality  into  a  natural  science  on 
the  basis  of  statistics.  Common  to  all  these  contentions  is 
the  erroneous  opinion  that  method  of  itself  alone  can  deter- 
mine what  is  true  and  what  is  not. 

There  is  a  tendency  in  many  religions  to  refer  their 
origin  to  a  special  revelation  of  deity.  History  makes  this 
■evident.  And  it  belongs  to  the  essence  of  Christianity  to 
attach  decisive  importance  to  this  circumstance  in  its  own 
case.  But  does  historical  method  require  us  to  treat  this 
that  is  common  to  all  religion  as  an  error  to  be  relegated 
simply  to  psychology  for  explanation?  Why  not  conclude, 
rather,  that  we  have  here  an  element  of  the  religious  life 
which  points  to  a  corresponding  truth  ?  At  all  events,  on 
the  supposition  that  divine  reason  is  the  pilot  of  history  and 
that  religion  is  an  integral  factor  of  human  life  in  history, 
such  a  conclusion  is  not  to  be  set  aside  as  a  priori  impossible. 

But  religious  history  does  not  decide  the  question  one 
way  or  the  other.  The  question  must  be  stated  differently 
for  those  who  acknowledge  that  Christianity  is  the  climax 
of  religious  development.  The  question  is  whether  this 
connection  between  Christianity  and  special  divine  revelation 
is  not  absolutely  essential,  that  Christianity  cannot  be  main- 
tained without  this  connection.  And  the  answer  is  that 
specific  appreciation  of  Christ  as  revelation  and  the  peculiar- 
ity of  the  Christian  religion  belong  together,  stand  and  fall 
together.  Rob  revelation  of  its  supernatural  character,  and 
it  becomes  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable.  Christianity  is  the 
religion  of  a  special  revelation  of  God  —  that  or   nothing. 


48    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Christianity  is  restricted  to  divine  revelation  in  Jesus  Christ, 
and  would  not  and  could  not  be  without  it.  Therefore  it  is 
the  only  true  religion. 

So  Kaftan,  And  there  the  matter  may  rest  until  we 
have  seen  the  fortunes  of  supernaturalism  and  of  rationalism 
before  the  judgment  seat  of  history. 


PAET  I 

AUTHORITY-RELIGION  (=  SUPERNATURALISM)  AND 
NATURALISM 


CHAPTEK   III 
THE  FORMATION  OF  AUTHORITY- RELIGION 

1.  In  real  religion  the  desire  for  blessedness  is  always  a 
desire  for  God  who  has  revealed  himself.  Every  religion 
cherishes  the  conviction  that  it  has  arisen  from  revelation  of 
God.  This  revelation  has  been  variously  conceived:  ethical 
and  non-ethical,  universal  and  particular.  As  to  theories, 
there  have  been  three  ways  of  conceiving  of  this  fundamental 
religious  notion,  all  of  which  are  open  to  grave  objections: 
the  traditionalistic,  the  rationalistic,  the  mystic;  though  there 
is  an  element  of  truth  in  each  of  them.  It  is  the  tradition- 
alistic—  that  is,  the  ecclesiastical — conception  of  revelation 
with  which  we  are  mainly  concerned  in  the  discussion  of 
Christianity  defined  as  authority-religion.  According  to 
the  traditionalistic  apprehension,  revelation  is  the  tradition 
through  which  a  series  of  ideas,  as  the  content  of  the  faith 
of  pious  men,  has  come  down  to  us.  More  definitely,  accord- 
ing to  this  view,  revelation  is  the  Bible.  In  this  connection, 
therefore,  it  is  my  task  to  indicate  briefly  the  church's  pro- 
gressive reduction  of  revelation  to  the  form  and  content  of 
the  biblical  tradition. 

The  universalistic  side  of  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  revela- 
tion, with  which  we  may  as  well  begin,  was  still  further 
developed  in  the  old  Greek  church  when,  more  and 
more,  educated  philosophic  Greeks  came  to  accept  Christi- 
anity. John  of  Damascus,^  who  in  this  point  closed  the 
Greek  development  of  dogma,  held  that  the  knowledge 
of  the  existence  of  God  is  implanted  in  all  men.  The 
revelations  of  God  in  creation,  in  the  Mosaic  law,  and  in  Christ 

1  Defide  orthodox.,  I,  1 :  "  God  did  uot  leave  us  in  absolute-ignorance.  For  the 
knowledge  of  God's  existence  has  been  implanted  by  Him  in  all  by  nature." 

51 


52    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 


are  all  related  to  this  natural  idea  of  God  only  as  an  ascend- 
ing series  of  more  powerful  means  of  its  reinforcement. 
Justin  Martyr'  and  Clement"  of  Alexandria  taught  that  God 
permitted  the  divine  Logos  to  descend  on  all  men  from  the 
beginning.  The  whole  human  race  is  partaker  of  the  Logos, 
so  that  all  who  live  according  to  reason  can  be  called  Chris- 
tians—  with  this  difference,  however,  that  while  the  heathen 
have  but  scattered  seeds  of  the  Logos,  the  Christians 
have  in  Jesus  the  whole  Logos.  But  now  that  the 
Christian  revelation  is  offered  to  mankind,  its  believing 
acceptance  is  viewed  as  the  only  means  of  salvation ;  hence  a 
Christian  particularism  for  the  present  grows  up  by  the  side 
of  this  universalism  in  reference  to  the  past.  The  liberal 
view  of  a  universal  activity  of  the  divine  Logos  was  so  altered 
that  the  Greek  Fathers  could  refer  the  traces  of  the  genuine 
knowledge  of  God  among  the  heathen  to  the  Jews,  from 
whom  they  had  appropriated  it.*  Originally  the  proposition 
was  that  whoever  in  any  age  or  among  any  people  lived  and 
taught  according  to  reason  were  Christians.  Now  it  is 
declared  that  whatever  of  good  belonged  to  the  heathen 
belongs  to  the  Christians,  for  they  are  the  heirs  of  the  Jews.* 

1  Justin,  Apol.,  I,  46:  "We  havo  been  taught  that  Christ  is  the  first-born  of 
God,  and  we  have  declared  that  He  is  the  Word  of  whom  every  race  of  men  were 
partakers;  and  those  who  lived  reasonably  are  Christians,  even  though  they  have 
been  thought  atheists;  as  among  the  Greeks,  Socrates  and  Heraclitus,  and  men  like 
them;  and  among  the  barbarians,  Abraham,  and  Ananias,  and  Azarias,  etc.  So  that 
even  they  who  lived  before  Christ,  and  lived  without  reason,  were  wicked  and  hos- 
tile to  Christ,  and  slew  those  who  lived  reasonably." 

^C'L'EUE^T,  Strom., I,  7:  "For  the  husbandman  of  the  soil  which  is  among  men  is 
one;  He  who  from  the  beginning,  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  sowed  nutritious 
seeds;  He  who  in  each  age  rained  down  the  Lord,  the  Word." 

3  "The  Jews  of  Alexandria  looked  upon  their  own  religion  as  a  revealed  philoso- 
phy resting  upon  the  oracles  of  the  Old  Testament,  to  which  all  the  wisdom  of  the 
Greeks  was  related  either  as  borrowed  or  as  a  preparatory  stage.  For  they  either 
ascribed  to  the  Spirit  of  God  only  the  sacred  writings  of  the  Jews,  in  which  case  the 
Greeks  must  have  stolen  from  them,  or  they  allowed  a  certain  activity  of  the  divine 
reason  in  the  Greek  thinkers  and  poets,  but  proclaimed  at  the  same  time  the  supe- 
riority of  the  absolute  revelation  which  has  been  granted  to  Moses." — Wehxle, 
Beginnings  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I,  p.  177. 

^  Justin,  Apol.,  I.  44:  "And  so,  too,  Plato,  when  he  says,  'The  blame  is  his  who 
chooses,  and  God  is  blameless,'  took  this  from  the  prophet  Moses  and  uttered  it. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion      53 

Time  was  when  there  was  the  same  assumption  of  a 
universal  and  original  revelation  on  the  part  of  the  old 
Latin  church.  To  be  sure,  this  revelation  was  viewed  as 
ordinary  and  natural,  rather  than  as  the  gift  of  the  Logos, 
to  which  the  extraordinary  and  the  supernatural  were  later 
supplied,  Tertullian  assumes  a  knowledge  of  God  which  is 
independent  of  special  revelation,  and  which  belongs  to  the 
divine  endowment  of  humanity,  and  is  common,  therefore,  to 
all  peoples.  To  establish  the  truth  of  Christianity,  he 
appeals  to  the  witness  of  the  soul,  which  is  naturally 
Christian.  He  says  that  all  the  essential  principles  of  the 
Christian  faith  may  be  developed  out  of  this  soul,  provided 
it  has  not  been  perverted  by  false  philosophy.'  Hence  Chris- 
tianity, together  with  the  whole  Old  Testament  revelation,  is 
only  an  institution  which  the  gracious  God  has  founded 
simply  that  men  may  be  the  more  easily  and  surely  saved.^ 
But  here  we  have  the  entering  of  the  wedge — this  supply- 
ing of  the  extraordinary  and  supernatural  to  the  ordinary  and 
natural,  that  salvation  may  be  facilitated.  First,  there  was 
the  great  difficulty  of  attaining  salvation  prior  to  and  apart 
from  the  addition  of  the  extraordinary  divine  revelation  to 
ordinary  and  natural.  Then,  at  length,  this  difficulty  became 
an  impossibility  in  the  judgment  of  the  Western  Church, 

For  Moses  is  more  ancient  than  all  the  Greek  writers.  And  whatever  both  philoso- 
phers and  poets  have  said  concerning  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  or  punishments 
after  death,  or  contemplation  of  things  heavenly,  or  doctrines  of  the  like  kind,  they 
have  received  such  suggestions  from  the  prophets  as  have  enabled  them  to  under- 
stand and  interpret  these  things."  II  8,13:  Speaking  of  the  Greeks,  "each  man 
spoke  well  in  proportion  to  the  share  he  had  of  the  spermatic  Word,  seeing  what 
was  related  to  it  ...  .  All  the  writers  were  able  to  see  realities  darkly  through  the 
sowing  of  the  implanted  word  that  was  in  them."  See  B.\OB,  ChristUche  Gnosis, 
pp.  526  S. 

iTertdllian,  Adv.  Marcion.,  I,  10:  ''The  volume  of  Moses  does  not  all  initiate 
the  knowledge  of  the  Creator  ....  The  greater  part  of  the  human  race,  although 
they  knew  not  the  name  of  Moses,  much  less  his  writing,  yet  knew  the  God  of 
Moses  ....  From  the  beginning  the  knowledge  of  God  is  the  dowry  of  the  soul. 
....  God  has  for  his  witness  this  whole  being  of  yours." 

sTertullian,  ApoL,  18:  But,  that  we  might  attain  an  ampler  and  more 
authoritative  knowledge  at  once  of  Himself,  and  of  His  counsels  and  will,  God  has 
added  a  written  revelation,"  etc. 


54     The  Finality  op  the  Christian   Religion 

all  the  more  so  with  the  development  of  the  doctrine  of  sin 
as  brought  in  by  the  fall  of  Adam  and  inherited  by  his 
descendants. 

Pelagius  held,  in  a  way,  to  an  inner,  consequently  univer- 
sal, revelation,^  to  which  the  special  Christian  revelation  was 
supplied  as  auxiliary.  Against  this — against  posse  non 
peccare  and  liberum  arhitrium — Augustine  affirmed  the 
necessity  of  external  revelation  and  of  the  agency  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  in  order  to  the  appropriation  of  this  revelation. 
Fallen  man  had  no  revelation  in  his  heart  till  one  was 
donated  him  from  without,  and  no  ability  to  lay  hold  of  the 
revelation,  and  hence  the  Holy  Spirit  must  apprehend  it  for 
him.^  The  church  was  custodian  of  both  revelation  and 
Spirit.  To  be  sure,  this  theory  was  formulated  in  the 
interest  of  the  absolutism  of  the  church.  But  the  conse- 
quent limitation  of  revelation  in  time  and  place  is  evident. 
It  is  an  absolute  supernaturalism,  which  we  have  here  both  on 
the  objective  and  the  subjective  side:  on  the  objective  side, 
revelation  is  anti-historical;  on  the  subjective,  anti-psycho- 
logical. There  is  a  botany,  said  to  be  valid  in  certain 
countries,  according  to  which  the  Great  Spirit,  having 
created  the  trees  of  the  forest,  comes  in  the  night  each  spring 
and  sticks  the  leaves  and  blossoms  on  the  branches.  So, 
according  to  Augustine,  the  great  human  tree,  blasted  by 
sin,  grows  nothing  from  within  that  is  divine;  revelation  is 
external,  particularistic,  miraculous ;  and  only  such  revelation 
saves.  And  this  Augustinian  position  recurs  in  Scholas- 
ticism. The  thought  of  Thomas  Aquinas  on  the  subject 
is  complex  and  elaborate.  He  held  that  we  knew  some 
things  concerning  God  and  salvation  through  the  reason, 
but  even  these  are  included  in  revelation,   on  which  account 

iQne  of  the  charges  against  him  at  the  Syuod  of  Carthage  was  that  he  taught: 
"Quoniam  et  ante  adventum  Domini  fuerunt  homines  impeccabiles,  i.  e.,  sine 
peccato." 

2  De  gratia  Christi,  25. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion      55 

alone  one  may  rely  upon  them.  Other  truths — e.  g.,  Trinity 
— transcend  the  range  of  reason  and  are  accessible  only  in 
the  church  on  the  ground  of  revelation ;  that  is,  authority. 
But  reason  has  a  function  in  regard  to  the  truths  of  revela- 
tion, as  revelation  has  a  function  in  regard  to  the  truths  of 
reason;  for  while  revelation  gives  validity  to  the  truths  of 
reason  which  the  latter  is  not  capable  to  accord,  reason, 
incompetent  indeed  to  prove  in  this  region,  may  yet  refute 
objections  raised  against  the  dogmas  of  revelation.' 

The  more  rigidly  the  reformers  clung  to  the  dogma  of 
hereditary  sin,  the  more  importance  they  had  to  attach  to 
special  or  particular  revelation  as  the  only  means  of  salva- 
tion. According  to  the  Formula  of  Concord,  the  human 
reason  since  the  fall  was  entirely  blind  in  spiritual  things; 
that  is,  in  matters  relating  to  religion  and  morality.  It  was 
unable  to  know  anything  in  this  region  in  its  own  strength. 
Hence  it  was  clear  that  the  way  of  salvation  was  not  to  b© 
found  without  special  revelation.^  Calvin,  however,  claimed 
that  there  was  a  natural  consciousness  of  God  in  fallen  man,, 
but  only  in  the  form  of  feeling.  "We  lay  it  down  as  a, 
position  not  to  be  controverted,  that  the  human  mind,  even 
by  natural  instinct,  possesses  some  sense  of  a  Deity." ^  Still 
Calvin  goes  on  to  urge  that  this  natural  revelation  does  not 
suffice. 

But,  however  men  were  chargeable  with  sinfully  corrupting 
the  seeds  of  divine  knowledge,  which,  by  the  wonderful  operation 

'Thomas  Aqoinas,  Summa  theol.,  p.  I,  Qu.,1,  Art.  1:  "Ad  eaetiam,  quaededeo 
ratione  humana  iavestigari  possunt,  necessarium  fuit,  hominem  iustrui  revelatioae 
divina,  quia  Veritas  de  Deo  per  rationeminvestigata  a  paucis  et  per  longum  tempus 
et  cum  admisione  multorum  errorum  hotnini  proveniret.  Necessarium  igitur  fuit 
praeter  philosophicas  disciplinas,  quae  per  rationem  investigantur,  sacram  doctri 
nam  per  revelationem  haberi."  His  point  is  further  worked  out  in  Suinma  cath.fid 
contra  Gentiles,!,  i.    See  also  American  Journal  of  Theology ,  October,  1900,  p.  680 

2 "Concerning  this  matter,  the  following  is  our  faith,  doctrine  and  confession 
to  wit :  that  the  understanding  and  reason  of  man  in  spiritual  things  are  wholly  blind, 
and  can  understand  nothing  by  their  proper  power,"  etc.     See  Sohaff,  Creeds  of 
Christendom,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  107. 

3  Institutes,  I,  3, 1. 


56    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

of  nature,  are  sown  in  their  hearts,  so  that  they  produce  no  good 
and  fair  crop,  yet  it  is  beyond  doubt,  that  the  simple  testimony 
magnificently  borne  by  the  creatures  to  the  glory  of  God,  is  very 
insuflScient  for  our  instruction.  For  as  soon  as  a  survey  of  the 
world  has  just  shown  us  a  deity,  neglecting  the  true  God,  we  set 
up  in  his  stead  the  dreams  and  phantasms  of  our  own  brains;  and 
confer  on  them  the  praise  of  righteousness,  wisdom,  goodness,  and 
power,  due  to  him.' 

We  need  an  assistance  other  and  better  than  natural  revela- 
tion to  direct  us  to  the  Creator  of  the  world,  he  says. 
Zwingli  also  ascribes  to  human  reason  a  knowledge  of  God, 
but  only  of  the  existence  of  God,  not  of  his  nature.  Many 
wise  men  have  independently  attained  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
existence  of  God,  but  a  knowledge  of  his  nature  is  possible 
only  through  God's  special  revelation. 

The  Socinians  occupied  a  singular  position.  They  denied 
hereditary  sin,  which  to  the  mind  of  the  orthodox  party  made 
special  revelation  necessary.  But  they  also  maintained  rigid- 
ly the  necessity  of  special  revelation,  denying  the  possibility 
of  natural  religion,  and  deriving  all  knowledge  of  God  from 
external  revelation.  This  Socinian  standpoint  grew  out  of  a 
skeptical  view  of  the  human  cognitive  faculty.  It  is  largely 
true  that  in  this  system  religion  was  only  an  external,  and 
by  no  means  essential,  addendum  to  morality.  It  holds  that 
the  feeling  of  right  and  wrong  is  innate  in  every  man,  and 
whoever  follows  this  feeling  is  obedient  to  God,  though  he 
may  never  know  or  think  that  there  is  a  God. 

The  orthodox  theologians  of  the  seventeenth  century^  com- 
bined and  systematized  with  architectonic  genius  the  previous 
development  of  the  doctrine  of  revelation  into  more  accurate 
and  rigid  definitions.  They  carefully  distinguished  between 
natural  revelation  and  revelation  of  God  in  the  narrower  sense, 
i.  c,  supernatural  revelation  through  the  Bible.  Thelatter  was 
defined  as  that  external  act  of  God  in  which  he  disclosed  him- 

1  Institutes,  I,  5,  15;   see  also  I,  5,  1.  '^E.  g.,  Quenstedt,  HoUaz,  Gerhardt. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion       57 

self  in  his  book  for  their  saving  instruction.  And  there  was 
salvation  in  no  other  way.  Particular  revelation  meant  the 
damnation  of  those  who  did  not  have  it.  As  for  the  Catholic 
there  was  no  salvation  outside  of  the  church,  so  for  Protestant 
orthodoxy  there  was  no  salvation  apart  from  the  revelation  of 
the  Book.  And  saving  revelation  and  the  Book  were  coinci- 
dent. The  Book  is  thus  the  basis  of  authority-religion.  And 
thus  also  the  process  by  which  saving  revelation  suffered  pro- 
irressive  reduction  to  the  literature  of  the  Bible  was  concluded. 
The  Book  as  a  whole,  distinctionless,  became  divine  author- 
ity in  all  matters  of  faith  and  practice.  And  revelation  is  a 
supernatural  communication  of  doctrines  guaranteed  to  be 
divine  by  the  miraculous  mode  of  their  origin.* 

2.  Of  the  proof  of  divine  revelation  little  need  be  said  at 
this  point.  In  the  period  and  process  of  the  formation  of 
authority-religion  appeal  was  made  to  miracle  and  prophecy 
as  proof.  And  of  these  two,  main  dependence  was  put  upon 
prophecy,  defined  as  prediction.  In  the  early  church  many 
were  convinced  of  the  divinity  of  Christ,  for  example,  on 
account  of  the  agreement  of  so  many  ancient  and  particular 
predictions  of  the  Old  Testament  about  him,  as  well  as  on 
account  of  his  own  fulfilment  of  his  own  prophecies. 

But  in  the  first  Christian  centuries  difficulty  was  felt  with 
this  proof,  inasmuch  as  both  miracles  and  prophecies  were 
possible  through  demoniac  powers.  It  was  on  this  account 
that  more  definite  criteria  were  necessary  to  distinguish  true 
divine  miracles  and  prophecies  from  the  demoniacal.  The 
moral  character  of  the  prophets  and  workers  of  miracles, 
and  the  beneficent  design  and  effect  of  their  doctrines 
and  deeds,  were  declared  to  constitute  the  touchstone 
required. 

But   effort    was    made    to  distinguish  true  miracle  and 

1  Whereas  we  now  see  that  revelation  is  not  the  mechanical  communication  ef  a 
message  from  without,  but  the  opening  of  the  inner  nature  of  specially  prepared  men 
to  receive  indications  of  the  will  of  God  in  their  own  moral  nature  and  in  the  world. 


58    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

prophecies,  not  only  for  the  demoniacally  supernatural,  but 
also  from  the  works  of  nature  and  natural  predictions.  To 
be  sure,  only  a  few  of  the  earlier  ecclesiastical  writers 
attempted  these  more  accurate  definitions.  The  author  of 
the  Clementine  Homilies  held  only  those  predictions  to  be 
divinely  inspired  prophecies  which  could  not  be  otherwise 
accounted  for.  Augustine  held  that  miracle  was  only  rela- 
tive and  subjective,  and  denied  that  there  was  any  such 
thing  as  absolute  miracle.  He  set  up  as  criteria  of  mira- 
cle only  (a)  the  unusual  or  the  extraordinary  or  the  excep- 
tional, and  (6)  the  astonishment  or  wonder  of  the  person  who 
perceives  the  phenomenon.^  It  was  the  Scholastics  who  first 
sharply  defined  miracles  in  a  way  that  would  serve  authority- 
religion.  A  phenomenon  does  not  become  a  miracle,  they 
urged,  from  the  circumstance  that  its  cause  is  unknown  to 
this  person  or  that,  or  that  it  cannot  be  explained  by  refer- 
ence to  some  particular  law  of  nature;  but  a  miracle  is  a 
phenomenon  whose  cause  is  absolutely  unknown  to  all, 
and  which  cannot  be  explained  by  reference  to  all  the 
forces  lodged  in  the  whole  creation.^  Finally,  miracles  and 
predictions  were  held  to  be  attestations  of  revelation  not 
only  by  the  Protestant  state  churches,  but  by  all  the  so-called 
dissenting  bodies  as  well.  If  anything,  more  emphasis  is 
placed  upon  miracles  as  proofs  in  Protestant  orthodoxy  than 
in  Catholicism.^ 

'Augustine,  De  utilitate  credenti,  16,  See  Pfleideeer,  Grundriss  der  christ- 
lichen  Glaubens-  uiid  Sittenlehre,  3d  ed.,  p.  100:  "  The  naive  faith  in  the  reality  of 
miracles,  extra-biblical  as  well  as  biblical,  which  the  church  shared  along  with  the 
whole  of  antiquity,  rested  on  the  poetic  supernaturalism  of  the  antique  view  of  the 
world,  which  Augustine  brought  to  dogmatic  expression  in  the  two-edged  formula 
that,  since  the  will  of  God  is  one  with  the  nature  of  things,  nothing  willed  of  God 
can  be  against  nature,  and  therefote  miracle  is  merely  against  known  nature." 

2 Thomas  Aquinas,  Summa  theol.,  1, 105,  7. 

3  Throughout  this  development  we  see  the  intellectualistic  apprehension  of  mira- 
cles. Their  ethico-religious  value  was  not  seen  until  the  function  of  myth,  legend, 
sagas,  poesy  in  the  history  of  religion  had  been  recognized.  The  "miracle"  may  be 
boarer  of  divine  revelation  without  having  anything  to  do  with  "law"  asd  its 
"yiolation." 


The  Formation  op  Authority-Religion       59 

3.  But  it  is  not  enough  that  the  revelation  be  proved ;  it 
must  be  preserved.  Revelation  that  saves  was  the  immediate 
possession  of  but  few  men,  even  among  its  contemporaries, 
since  it  was  individual  divine  communication  in  a  given  time 
and  space.  For  the  after-world  it  would  be  entirely  lost,  if 
some  institution  was  not  hit  upon  to  hand  it  down.  God's 
revelation  was  in  documents  of  a  dead  past.  The  church 
canonized  and  interpreted  them;  and  it  did  both,  if  in 
appearance  historically,  yet  in  fact  dogmatically,  according 
to  the  status  quo  of  doctrine  and  practice  in  the  early  non- 
heretical  churches,  the  most  important  of  which  were  founded 
by  the  apostles  themselves.  But  original  revelation  was 
also  preserved  and  perpetuated  through  extra-canonical  tra- 
dition. This  unwritten  tradition  was  a  source  of  redemptive 
truths  for  the  Catholic  church.  These  traditions  came  to  be 
divided  into  three  classes:  divine,  ecclesiastical,  apostolic. 
Divine  traditions  were  such  doctrines  and  practices  as  were 
communicated  by  Christ  and  his  apostles,  but  were  not  to  be 
found  in  the  Scriptures.  Apostolic  traditions  are  such  defi- 
nitions as  were  made  by  the  apostles  with  the  co-operation 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  but  are  not  contained  in  the  epistles. 
Ecclesiastical  traditions  are  such  customs  as  have  little  by 
little  come  to  have  the  power  of  law  in  the  church.  This 
last  covered  the  abuses  against  which  Protestantism  rebelled, 
and  which  formed  the  outer  occasion  for  the  ultimate  Protes- 
tant delimitation  of  the  saving  revelation  to  canon  of  Scrip- 
ture alone. 

The  canon  of  Scripture  was  Word  of  God.  Hence  divine 
dignity  belonged  to  it.  Consequently,  in  relation  to  eccle- 
siastical development  in  history  on  the  one  hand,  and  to 
human  thought  and  speculation  on  the  other,  it  had  norma- 
tive and  judicial  power.  The  Scripture  was  "Word  of 
God" — that  is,  revelation — in  such  a  way  that  the  two  are 
interchangeable,  identical.     Consequently  a  thing  could  no 


60    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

more  be  Word  of  God  if  it  did  not  belong  to  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  than  something  could  belong  to  the  Scriptures 
which  was  not  Word  of  God.  By  virtue  of  the  latter,  the 
Scriptures  must  be  pure  and  free  from  all  mere  human 
constituents;  by  virtue  of  the  former,  "integrity"  belongs 
to  the  Scriptures  ;  i.  e.,  nothing  that  has  ever  belonged  to 
the  Word  of  God  has  been  lost  in  history.  Nor  is  there 
need  of  any  other  Word  of  God  outside  of  the  Bible. 
Hence  the  Bible  must  be  "sufficient,"  and  universally 
intelligible  in  all  matters  pertaining  to  salvation — i.  e., 
"perspicuity"  was  affirmed.' 

4.  From  the  foregoing  it  appears  "that  ecclesiastical 
tradition  and  the  Sacred  Scriptures  are  the  channels  through 
which  the  divine  revelation  of  redemption,  communicated  to 
certain  individuals  in  ancient  times,  flowed  to  later  genera- 
tions. As  a  consequence,  two  questions  arose :  Were  those 
channels  so  solid  and  tight  that  nothing  of  their  content 
could  go  to  waste  in  the  passage?  and.  Were  they  so  pure 
that  nothing  alien  to  the  content  could  mingle  with  it? 
This  would  be  too  much  to  expect,  were  they  mere  human 
agencies  to  which  the  divine  content  was  intrusted.  The 
need  here  may  be  illustrated  from  the  modern  effort  to 
recover  the  empirical  Jesus  of  history.  Through  textual 
criticism  a  pure  text  is  sought  from  among  manifold  variants. 
From  among  the  gospels  one,  say  Mark,  is  assigned  priority 
and  primacy.  We  then  pass  from  the  gospel  back  to  its 
documentary  sources,  from  these  to  the  traditions  on  which 
they  rest,  and  finally  from  tradition  to  the  facts.  But  the 
integrity  and  purity  of  the  revelation  are  jeopardized  from 
the  very  beginning.     For  even  an  eye-  and  ear-witness  of 

1  It  may  be  added  that  Protestants  denied  and  Catholics  aflBrmed  the  canonical 
dignity  of  the  Apocrypha;  that  Protestants  placed  equal  value  on  the  Old  and  the 
New  Testaments  ;  that  the  Socinians  held  that  the  Old  Testament  could  be  dispensed 
with  and  put  a  graded  valuation  upon  its  different  parts,  willing  to  accord  to  the 
Old  Testament  an  historical  rather  than  a  dogmatic  value. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion      61 

the  words  and  deeds  of  Jesus  would,  if  left  to  his  own 
intellectual  power,  fail  to  catch  all  in  that  initial  apprehen- 
sion, and  of  that  which  he  did  apprehend  much  would 
appear  in  a  subjective  light,  and  all  would  be  modified  in 
the  very  apprehension  by  what  the  mind  supplies  in  the 
activity  of  appropriation.  Then  in  the  course  of  time 
something  would  be  obliterated  from  the  memory  of  this 
witness,  and  much  would  suffer  transformation  again  accord- 
ing to  his  own  spiritual  bent  or  his  theoretical  point  of  view. 
And  upon  occasion  of  oral  and  written  reproduction,  imper- 
fection and  peculiarities  of  exposition  would  lead  to  further 
corruption  of  the  content.  Thus,  supposing  that  the  eye- 
and  ear-witness  was  not  a  writer,  but  that  the  tradition  was 
orally  propagated  for  a  generation  or  two,  all  these  additions 
and  subtractions  and  changes  and  transformations  would 
increase  more  and  more.  Therefore,  if  the  content  of  this 
revelation — without  which,  by  hypothesis,  no  man  could  be 
saved — was  to  be  passed  on  by  Scripture  and  tradition  undi- 
minished and  uncorrupted  to  the  after- world,  it  was  necessary 
for  God  to  do  something  more  than  merely  to  give  this  con- 
tent to  humanity  and  then  leave  it  to  make  its  own  way 
through  history.  He  must  care  for  its  encasement  in  a  form. 
He  must  give  ideas  and  words.  He  must  in  very  fact  speak 
through  the  prophets  and  in  Christ.  He  must  write  through 
evangelists,  and  he  must  make  decisions  through  bishops  and 
popes.  In  short,  he  must  supply  to  revelation  the  infalli- 
bility of  the  church  and  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures. 

According  to  Catholic  teaching,  the  church  cannot  err  in 
her  exposition  of  the  doctrines  of  faith  and  practice,  since 
she  is  guided  by  the  Holy  Spirit.'  And  it  is  not  merely  in 
absolutely  essential  matters  that  she  cannot  err,  but  also  in 
other  things  which  she  prescribes  to  be  believed  and  done, 

1  Catech.  Rom.,  1, 10, 18 :  "  ecclesia  errare  non  potest  in  fidei  ac  morum  disciplina 
tradenda,  cum  a  spiritus  aneto  gubernetur." 


02    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

whether  they  be  contained  in  the  Scriptures  or  not/  If  one 
asks  where  this  infallible  church  is  to  be  sought,  the  answer 
was :  In  the  totality  of  believers  and  bishops.  Yet  their 
universal  agreement  is  but  an  ideal.  In  reality  the  answer 
comes  to  be:  A  majority  of  believers  and  bishops,  especially 
when  the  latter  are  convened  in  synods  in  order  to  oppose 
the  corruption  of  the  faith  on  the  part  of  heretical  minor- 
ities. Councils,  especially  ecumenical,  have  always  arro- 
gated to  themselves  the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit;  and  in 
modern  times  their  infallibility,  which  Athanasius  and 
Augustine  did  not  acknowledge,  has  become  the  prevalent 
view  in  the  church.  But  the  contingency  of  this  note 
showed  itself,  for  example,  in  the  Arian  controversy.  In 
many  synods  as  large  as  those  which  were  later  esteemed 
orthodox,  and  not  less  legal,  the  Arian  party  conquered, 
and  yet  the  decisions  of  such  synods  were  not  acknowledged 
subsequently  by  the  church.  Furthermore,  when  later  all 
ecclesiastical  power  came  to  be  more  and  more  concentrated 
in  the  Roman  bishop,  as  the  development  went  on,  the 
popes  fell  into  contradiction,  partly  with  themselves,  partly 
with  the  great  Reformation  synods  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
Luther  and  other  reformers  appealed  to  this  fact  of  history 
in  order  to  prove  the  unfitness  of  the  bishops  in  matters  of 
ecclesiastical  doctrinal  authority,  even  apart  from  the  proof 
drawn  from  the  content  of  synodal  and  papal  decisions.  All 
the  more  was  the  infallibility  of  the  Scriptures  insisted  upon, 
of  which  Catholic  ecclesiastical  infallibility  was  but  a  con- 
tinuation. Finally,  as  the  way  out  of  this  whole  difficulty, 
disclosed  by  a  study  of  the  history  of  councils,  bishops,  and 

1  Bellaemin,  De  eccl.  milit.,  14:  "Nostra  sententia  est,  ecclesiam  absolute  non 
posso  errare  nee  in  rebus  absolute  necessariis,  nee  in  aliis  quae  credenda  vel 
facionda  nobis  propouit,  sine  habeantur  expresse  in  seriptura,  sine  non  .  .  .  .  et 
cum  dicimus,  ecclesiam  non  posse  errare,  id  intelligimus  tam  de  universitate 
fldelium,  quam  episcoporum,  ita  ut  sensus  sit  ejus  propositionis :  ecclesia  non  potest 
errare,  i.  e.  id  quod  tenent  omues  fldeles  tanquam  de  fide,  et  similiter  id  quod  docent 
omncs  episcopi  tanquam  ad  fidem  pertinens,  necessario  est  verum  ot  de  fide." 


The  Formation  op  Authority-Religion      63 

popes,  the  infallibility  of  the  pope  alone  was  declared.     It 
was  easier  for  him  to  be  unanimous  with  himself.' 

Turn  now  to  the  formation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Scriptures.  While  the  theory  was  excogitated  on 
Protestant  soil,  the  idea,  common  indeed  to  all  ancient 
peoples,  is  pagan  in  origin.  Everywhere  its  purpose  has 
consistently  been  to  exclude  the  activity  of  the  human  in 
order  to  insure  the  immediate  divinity  of  the  oracle.  Even 
according  to  the  Scriptures,  it  is  God  who  spoke  by  the 
mouth  of  the  prophets.^  The  words  of  holy  men  did  not 
issue  from  their  own  will,  but  from  the  impulse  of  God's 
s[)irit.^  Therefore  the  Scriptures  are  inspired  by  God,  and 
of  course  verbally.*  The  disciples  on  trial  were  not  to  think 
what  they  should  say;  it  would  be  given  them.^  Similarly, 
the  ancient  church  assumed  that  the  Old  Testament  was  in- 
spired, and  when  a  New  Testament  arose,  it  was  thought  to 
be  inspired  also  by  the  Spirit  or  the  Logos.  This  inspira- 
tion belonged  even  to  the  historical  books  of  the  Bible.  Even 
in  very  ancient  times,  however,  some  difficulty  was  felt  as  to 
the  historical  writers  in  the  Bible — the  lack  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  working  through  them,  Luke's  explicit  self-depend- 
ence, troubled  the  Fathers.  Moreover,  some  of  the  Fathers 
inconsistently  distinguished  different  degrees  of  inspiration 
in  the  Scriptures.  For  example,  Origen,  under  Greek  influ- 
ence, conceived  that  the  biblical  writers  wrote  according  to 
their  own  power  of  comprehension  and  memory,  and  turned 

1  A  recent  sidelight  upon  the  pope's  own  feeling  as  regards  his  infallibility  may 
be  found  in  an  article  by  a  distinguished  Roman  Catholic  scholar  and  cleric,  in  the 
Independent  of  January  28,  1904,  p.  198.  In  explaining  the  late  pope's  refusal  to 
condemn  Loisy's  book,  he  says:  "Perhaps  the  dead  pontiff  remembered  how  he  had 
been  fooled  into  signing  the  document  which  declared  the  three  witnesses  of  First 
John  authentic.  It  is  an  open  secret  that  when  that  decree  came  out  Cardinal 
Vaughan  hurried  off  to  Rome  and  saw  the  pope.  On  learning  how  the  scholarly 
world,  as  well  as  the  early  Fathers,  rejected  the  text  as  spurious,  Leo  XIII  declared 
that  Mazella,  the  Jesuit  cardinal,  had  deceived  him  by  saying  the  disputed  text  was 
in  the  Fathers.    Leo  XIII  would  not  have  his  fingers  burned  a  second  time." 

2Actsl:16;  4:21;  c/.  Matt.  1 :22;  2:15.  32  Peter  1:21. 

*2Tim.  3:16.  5 Matt.  10:19,  20. 


64    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

away  from  the  letter  and  single  word,  to  which  the  truth 
was  not  bound,  to  the  universal  truth  of  their  writings. 
Moreover,  in  the  Middle  Ages  we  find,  along  with  traditional 
strict  views,  very  free  judgment  concerning  inspiration.  The 
Renaissance,  too,  brought  more  liberal  views  of  the  Scriptures, 
as  of  other  literary  survivals  of  antiquity.  And  Luther,  as 
is  well  known,  found  much  that  was  unprofitable,  human, 
and  transitory  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  he  declared  that 
the  New  Testament  was  of  very  unequal  value.  As  for  the 
latter,  he  said  that  the  epistle  of  James  was  an  epistle  of 
straw,  irreconcilable  with  Paul,  and  he  had  little  use  for  the 
Revelation  and  Hebrews;  while  in  his  controversy  with 
Zwingli  he  rigidly  adhered  to  the  letter,  "Hoc  est  corpus 
meum."  So  we  see  at  once  literal  inspiration  and  most 
liberal  looseness  in  Luther's  idea  of  inspiration.  Zwingli 
tended  to  the  position  of  the  equal  binding  authority  of  all 
parts  of  Scripture.  Calvin  would  treat  the  whole  Bible  as 
if  God  spoke  immediately  from  heaven.' 

But  the  historical  situation  of  Protestantism  came  to  be 
a  difficult  one.  The  authority  of  the  church  had  been 
renounced,  and  if  the  human  spirit  needed  an  external  author- 
ity, as  came  to  be  supposed,  only  the  Bible  remained.  But 
the  Bible  was  no  absolute  authority,  such  as  their  Catholic 
opponents  enjoyed,  if  a  single  word  could  be  doubted.  To 
discriminate  between  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment, as  Luther  did,  and  to  grade  the  New  Testament — to 
distinguish  between  human  and  divine  elements,  between 
what  was  binding  and  what  was  not — ^is  to  introduce  the 
disturbing  factor  of  subjectivity,  and  is  tantamount  to  admit- 
ting that  the  Bible  is  not  an  external  regulative  power  of  an 
absolute  kind.  No  limits  can  be  set  to  the  critical  under- 
standing in  that  process  of  valuation.  And  it  was  the  rec- 
ognition of  these  facts  that  consistently  led  from  Luther  of 

1  Institutes,  I,  7,  1. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion      65 

the  sixteenth  to  Quenstedt  and  others  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

It  was  different  with  the  Catholics.  They  accorded 
regulative  authority  to  tradition  and  church  along  with  the 
Scriptures;  hence  they  could  neglect  things  that  were  in  the 
Scriptures.  Indeed,  not  the  Scriptures,  but  the  church, 
enjoyed  primacy.  The  Protestants,  however,  would  build 
all  on  the  Scriptures,  while  it  might  be  to  the  interest  of 
the  Catholics  to  emphasize  the  mixed  character  of  the 
Scriptures.^ 

As  indicated  above,  no  real  theory  of  inspiration  was 
elaborated  till  Protestant  orthodoxy.  Still  it  may  be  well 
to  repeat  that  the  historical  basis  of  the  theory  is  the  bibli- 
cal view  of  the  prophetic  inspiredness.  As  in  heathen  man- 
tic  art,  so  in  Hebrew  prophecy,  the  receiver  of  the  revelation 
is  passive.  The  New  Testament  idea  is  not  different.  Every- 
thing which  is  written  i-s  inspired  of  God,  and  is  profitable." 
The  biblical  idea  of  the  inspiration  of  the  biblical  books  was 
transferred  by  the  rising  church  from  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  New  Testament  not  later  than  the  end  of  the  second  cen- 
tury. All  the  time  the  presupposition  is  the  formal  divine 
authority  of  "Word  of  Bible,"  but  without  having  developed 
a  formal  inspiration  theory.  Even  the  period  of  the 
Reformation  knew  none.  It  simply  uncritically  presupposed 
the  divine  origin  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  infallible  authority 
of  their  doctrines.  It  was  a  long  time  after  the  consumma- 
tion of  the  identification  of  "Word  of  Bible"  and  "Word  of 
God"  before  the  rise  of  a  formal  theory  concerning  the  ori- 
gin of  the  biblical  books,  and  still  longer  before  this  theory 

iBellaemin,  De  verfto  rfiy.,  1, 15:  "Aliter  Deus  adfuit  prophetis,  aliter  histf)- 
ricis.  Ulis  revelavit  f utura  et  simul  adstitit,  ne  aliquid  falsi  admiscerent  in  scribeml< > ; 
his  non  semper  revelavit  ea,  quae  scripturi  erant,  sed  excitavit  duiitaxat,  ut  scriberent 
ea,  quae  vel  viderant,  vel  audierant,  quorum  recordabantur,  et  simul  adstitit,  ne  quid 
falsi  scriberent,  quae  assistentia  non  excludebat  laborem." 

2The  whole  so-called  "pneumatic"  interpretation  of  Scripture,  which  har- 
monizes the  contradiction  between  the  biblical  letter  treated  as  divine  authority  and 
the  new  religious  consciousness,  is  connected  indissolubly  with  this  idea. 


66    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

attained  its  dogmatic  conclusion.  But  this  identification  of 
"Word  of  God"  and  Sacred  Scripture  led  necessarily  to  the 
formation  of  the  orthodox  inspiration  theory,  according  to 
which  the  antique  and  biblical  ideas  of  divine  inbreathing 
were  accentuated.  In  particular,  the  inspiration  of  persons 
was  supplanted  by  inspiration  of  books,  which,  in  origin,  con- 
tent, and  form,  were  referred  to  the  absolutely  supernatural 
activity  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  a  way  that  excluded  all  human 
participation  of  the  biblical  authors  apart  from  the  mere 
mechanical  business  of  writing.  The  theory  in  its  details  is 
as  follows :  (a)  That  the  sacred  writers  were  moved  to  write 
at  all  was  due  to  the  divine  impulse  and  command,  i.  e.,  im- 
pulsus  ad  scrihendum;  (b)  in  the  next  place,  what  they 
should  write  was  given  them  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  i.  e.,  sug- 
gestio  rerum;  (c)  in  addition,  the  form  and  manner  of  the 
writing  were  from  the  Spirit,  i.  e.,  suggestio  verhorum.  The 
immediate  divine  inspiration  of  matter  and  words — without 
distinguishing  between  dogmatic  and  historical,  moral  and 
geographical,  and  without  caring  whether  the  writers  under- 
stood what  they  wrote  or  not — this  came  to  be  the  orthodox 
church  doctrine.  In  oral  proclamation  the  human  instru- 
ments furnished  only  the  tongue,  in  the  written  only  the 
pen;  therefore  God  alone  is  the  author  of  the  Book.'  To  be 
sure,  difficulties  suggested  themselves.  One  such  was  due 
to  the  unity  of  authorship  and  diversity  of  style  and  exposi- 
tion. But  this  difficulty  was  resolved  by  the  supposition 
that  the  Holy  Spirit  accommodated  himself  to  the  stage  of 
culture  and  to  the  individuality  of  each  writer;  that  is,  the 

iSuch  a  theory  was  indispensable  to  the  Protestant  opposition  to  the  Roman 
Catholic  church.  If  word  of  Scripture  and  teaching  of  church  are  set  over  against 
each  other  as  word  of  God  and  word  of  man,  then  all  active  human  participation  in 
the  origin  of  Scripture  must  be  absolutely  excluded.  If  the  Scripture  is  in  any  least 
possible  particular  word  of  man,  it  is  no  longer  absolute  authority.  Therefore,  the 
orthodox  doctrine  of  inspiration  answered  a  question  of  life  and  death  for  ortho- 
doxy, and  answered  it  in  the  only  way  it  could  be  answered  in  order  to  keep  intact 
the  thesis  of  the  absolute  authority  of  the  Bible.  Subsequent  gradual  departure 
from  the  theory  has  carried  with  it  at  the  same  time  the  gradual  dissolution  of 
orthodoxy.    The  original  orthodoxy  is  the  only  consistent  orthodoxy. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion      67 

Holy  Spirit  let  each  writer  choose  such  words  as  the  writer 
would  have  chosen  had  he  been  left  to  himself.  But  this 
was  to  get  out  of  one  difficulty  only  to  fall  into  another, 
inasmuch  as  the  inspiration  of  the  words  was  endangered  by 
such  a  supposition.  In  view  of  this  difficulty,  it  was  at 
length  admitted  that  inspiration  of  words  was  subordinate  to 
that  of  idea.  Still  another  dangerous  point  was  connected 
with  blemishes  of  style,  not  in  keeping  with  the  divine 
dignity,  since  the  Old  Testament  was  not  written  in  pure 
Hebrew,  nor  the  New  in  pure  Greek.  The  older  dogma- 
ticians  tried  to  avert  the  danger  by  the  most  artificial  dis- 
tinctions and  the  most  violent  makeshifts. 

But  one  could  not  stop  with  inspiration  of  words  as  such ; 
for  words,  since  they  are  composed  of  letters,  could  not  be 
inspired  if  letters  were  not.  Hence  the  discovery  that  the 
Hebrew  vowel-points  were  not  as  old  as  the  consonants  of 
the  text  was  another  great  embarrassment.  Learned  con- 
tradiction was  undertaken,  the  nerve  of  the  proof  being  an 
argumentum  e  sileritio.  Moreover,  the  equal  age  of  vocals 
and  consonants  was  accepted  in  the  Helvetian  Formula, 
Canon  2.  But  this  was  only  the  beginning  of  the  danger 
which  threatened  the  ecclesiastical  theory  of  inspiration  from 
the  side  of  textual  criticism.  For,  supposing  the  text  had 
been  divinely  given  verbally,  even  literally,  to  the  writers, 
what  guarantees  that  the  text  was  thereafter  accurately  copied  ? 
Critical  labors  brought  to  light  thousands  of  dissimilarities 
and  variations  in  the  different  codices.  Thus  the  work  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  in  inspiring  the  Scriptures  was  exposed  to 
frustration  through  the  factors  of  human  weakness  and  care- 
lessness. The  fallible  human  spirit,  to  whom  one  sought  to 
give  an  infallible  guide  in  the  Scriptures,  was  thus  set  up  as 
judge  again  concerning  that  Scripture  in  listing  the  divers 
readings.  Nothing  remained  for  the  church  but  to  choose 
one  of  the  horns  of  a  dilemma:   either  to  hold  on  to  the 


68     The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

textus  receptus  as  divinely  inspired,  and  to  declare  that  the 
miracle  of  inspiration  was  repeated  through  a  series  of  tran- 
scripts during  the  Christian  centuries ;  or  to  accept  the  results 
of  criticism,  and,  in  that  case,  the  consequences  which  flow 
from  criticism.  But  the  church  declined  to  choose.  The 
way  out  at  first  was  rather  to  deny  the  fact  in  question.  The 
Reformed  church  did  this  in  the  Helvetian  Formula. 

Then  there  also  arose  the  question  of  lost  books  to  be 
considered,  and  the  policy  was  to  affirm  that  many  of  them 
were  in  fact  in  the  canon  as  constituents  of  other  books ;  or 
to  declare  that,  if  they  were  lost,  they  were  not  sacred  books, 
or  at  least  they  were  not  sacred  for  all  time ;  or  to  declare 
that,  if  they  were  sacred,  they  were  not  canonical ;  e.  (/.,  Paul's 
letter  to  Laodicea. 

So  much  as  regards  subtractions  from  the  canonical 
books.  But  what  if  there  be  additions,  i.  e.,  books  not 
genuine?  Conditions  were  not  yet  ripe  for  our  later  prob- 
lem of  the  authenticity  of  biblical  books.  The  question  was 
not.  Are  the  Scriptures  authentic  ?  but,  Are  they  inspired  ? 
What  does  it  matter  as  to  the  human  writer  on  the  hypothesis 
of  their  divine  authorship  ?  Early  Protestant  theologians  had 
no  need  to  set  out,  as  in  more  modern  times,  from  the  veracity 
of  the  authors  or  the  genuineness  of  the  writing,  in  order  to 
prove  the  divinity  of  the  Scriptures.  Such  considerations, 
together  with  others,  such  as  the  excellence  of  content,  the 
sublimity  of  expression,  even  miracles  and  prophecies,  estab- 
lished according  to  them  a  mere  human  faith,  a  moral  proba- 
bility which,  however  great,  could  never  become  absolute 
certainty,  i.  e.,  divine  faith.  Calvin,  in  particular,  warned 
the  church  against  building  faith  in  the  divine  word  upon 
the  sand  of  human  reasons  and  conclusions. 

It  is  true  that  if  we  were  inclined  to  argue  the  point,  many 
things  might  be  adduced  which  certainly  evince,  if  there  be  any 
God  in  heaven,  that  he  is  the  Author  of  the  Law,  and  the  Prophets, 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Keligion      69 

and  the  Gospel.  Yet  it  is  acting  a  preposterous  part  to  endeavor 
to  produce  sound  faith  in  the  Scriptures  by  disputations.^ 

According  to  Catholics,  the  rock  upon  which  faith  in  the 
Scriptures  should  be  built  was  the  church,  the  last  court  of 
appeal.  But  the  fundamental  presupposition  of  Catholicism 
— namely,  the  divinity  of  the  church  —  was  rejected  by 
Protestants.  On  the  other  hand,  according  to  the  correct 
insight  of  those  old  theologians,  Calvin  especially,  rational 
proofs  drawn  from  miracles,  fulfilment  of  prophecy,  excellence 
of  doctrine,  still  more  so  from  antiquity  and  genuineness  of 
the  writings,  yielded  only  probability.  Besides,  such  mode 
of  proof  was  but  to  make — contrary  to  the  formal  principle 
of  Protestantism — ^the  human  reason  the  last  court  of  appeal 
concerning  the  Scriptures. 

But  if  neither  church  nor  reason  suffices,  whereon  shall 
we  build  our  faith  in  the  Scriptures?  As  if,  so  the  answer 
ran,  any  far-fetched  proofs,  either  from  the  church  or  the 
reason,  were  needed! 

This  is  just  as  if  one  should  inquire,  How  shall  we  learn  to 
distinguish  light  from  darkness,  white  from  black,  sweet  from 
bitter?  For  the  Scripture  exhibits  as  clear  evidence  of  its  truth, 
as  white  and  black  things  do  of  their  color,  or  sweet  and  bitter 
things  of  their  taste.^ 

But  what  is  this  but  (a)  to  set  up  a  highly  subjective  crite- 
rion, and  (6)  to  leave  the  ultimate  decision  to  fallible  man, 
to  whose  nature  just  this  feeling  belongs?  Neither  the  one 
nor  the  other,  Calvin  replies. 

Religion  appearing,  to  profane  men,  to  consist  wholly  in 
opinion,  in  order  that  they  may  not  believe  anything  on  foolish  or 
slight  grounds,  they  wish  and  expect  it  to  be  proved  by  rational 
arguments,  that  Moses  and  the  prophets  spake  by  divine  inspira- 
tion. But  I  reply  that  the  testimony  of  the  Spirit  is  superior  to 
all  reason.  For,  as  God  alone  is  a  sufficient  witness  of  himself  in 
his  own  word,  so  also  the  word  will  never  gain  credit  in  the  hearts 

1  Institutes,  I,  7,  4.  ^ibid.,  I,  7,  2. 


70    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

of  man,  till  it  be  confirmed  by  the  internal  testimony  of  the 
Spirit. 

It  is  necessary,  therefore,  that  the  same  Spirit,  who  spake  by 
the  mouths  of  the  prophets,  should  penetrate  into  our  hearts,  to 
convince  us  that  they  faithfully  delivered  the  oracles  which  were 
divinely  entrusted  to  them.' 

So,  then,  this  feeling  that  the  divine  word  is  true  is 
yiothing  human,  hut  is  itself  divine.  It  is  not  our  spirit  that 
assures  us  of  the  truth  of  the  Scriptures,  but  that  same  divine 
Spirit  by  which  the  Scriptures  were  inspired.  If  the  divine 
Spirit  speaks  in  our  hearts,  then  we  no  longer  believe  on  the 
foreign  authority  of  the  church,  nor  on  the  authority  of  our 
own  understanding  or  feeling,  both  of  which  are  untrust- 
worthy, but  on  the  authority  of  the  "internal  testimony  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,"  to  which  we  subject  our  judgment.  Still, 
in  those  hours  when  the  divine  witness  is  weak  within  us, 
proofs  of  probability  may  serve  as  reinforcement. 

Here,  then,  the  orthodox  system  seems  to  have  found  a 
rock  on  which  it  could  firmly  rest,  independent  equally  of 
fallible  church  and  fallible  reason.  But  it  is  precisely  at 
this  point  that  the  feet  begin  to  slip  and  the  position  is  lost, 
never  to  be  recovered  again.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
Pietists  and  Quakers — e.  g.,  Barclay  —  pointed  out  that  if  it 
is  an  inner  revelation  of  the  divine  Spirit  whereby  the  Scrip- 
ture is  first  known  as  divine,  then  it  is  not  the  Scripture, 
but  just  that  inner  working  of  the  divine  Spirit,  which  is  the 
last  court  of  appeal.  On  the  other  hand,  the  rationalists, 
more  dangerously,  showed  how  the  orthodox  system  transcends 
itself  at  this  point;  for  if  it  is  the  inwardly  felt  witness  of 
the  Spirit  which  makes  me  certain  of  the  divinity  of  the 
Bible,  then  it  requires  but  little  reflection  to  give  rise  to  a 
further  question:  Who  guarantees  to  me  that  this  feeling 
in  me,  which  yet  is,  by  hypothesis,  not  of  me,  originates 
from  the  working  of  the  divine  Spirit?     Between  the  Bible 

1  Institutes,  I,  7,  4. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion      71 

and  the  human  spirit  is  introduced  this  tertium  quid,  the 
divine  Spirit,  witnessing  in  the  latter  of  the  former.  But 
who  witnesses  to  the  divinity  of  this  witness?  Either,  only 
itself  again,  but  that  is  to  say,  no  one;  or,  something,  be  it 
feeling,  be  it  thought,  in  the  human  spirit,  thus  according 
primacy  to  the  latter. 

5.  Supposing  that  the  divine  revelation,  from  its  home  in 
the  distant  past,  has  been  conveyed  to  us  in  its  perfection  and 
purity,  by  means  of  Sacred  Scripture,  still  it  must  be  further 
brought  into  us,  if  it  is  to  save  us.  Now,  it  is  by  means  of 
interpretation  that  we  appropriate  its  contents.  Interpre- 
tation, as  seen  from  its  history,  is  of  two  kinds:  ecclesiastical 
and  scientific.  The  latter  inquires  as  to  the  character  of  the 
writing  to  be  interpreted ;  the  former  knows  this  beforehand, 
knows  that  it  is  a  sacred  divine  writing,  and  on  this  account 
knows  also  that  it  will  find  nothing  in  it  as  a  whole  that  is 
not  true  and  worthy  of  God  the  author.  The  latter  judges 
of  an  author  after  it  has  interpreted  him ;  the  former,  before,, 
assuming  that  the  worth  of  the  book  has  been  predetermined. 
According  to  ecclesiastical  interpretation,  which  clings  to  the* 
idea  of  the  divine  worthiness  of  all  that  is  canonical,  true; 
understanding  of  a  passage  is  not  attained  so  long  as  an  edify- 
ing content  is  not  reached. 

But  what  if,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  such  edifying 
content,  but  just  the  opposite?  In  all  such  cases,  histori- 
cally, two  possibilities  were  at  the  option  of  the  interpreter: 
if  he  occupied  the  author's  standpoint  in  religion  and  moral- 
ity, in  spirituality  and  culture,  in  stage  and  tendency,  thert 
all  was  found  to  be  edifying  and  worthy  of  God  as  it  stood; 
but  if  the  interpreter  was  on  a  higher  moral  plane,  or  waa 
different  in  culture  from  the  author,  then  he  was  offended  at 
the  unedifying  passage,  and  the  offense  was  removed  by  what, 
a  man  of  science  would  adjudge  to  be  violent  interpretations. 
It  was  the  allegorical  method  which  was  thus  made  to  cover 


72     The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

a  multitude  of  sins — the  pneumatic  method  of  interpretation 
is  but  a  slight  modification  of  the  same  thing.  From  this 
view-point  one  did  not  deny  that  now  and  then  the  wording 
of  a  passage  led  to  something  unimportant,  unedifying,  or 
even  unworthy  of  God  the  author;  but  such  could  not  possibly 
be  the  mind  of  the  Spirit.  Hence  the  wording  was  only 
somehow  an  index  pointing  to  a  deeper  meaning  in  the  back- 
ground. Moreover,  it  is  plainly  to  be  seen  that  by  this 
method  all  the  extra-scriptural  doctrines  and  customs  of 
the  church  could  be  easily  imported  into  the  Scripture,  there- 
by securing  divine  authority  for  these  later  constituents  of 
authority-religion.  But  if  subsequent  development  could  be 
thus  biblicized,  the  Bible  could  also  be  so  interpreted  as  to 
say  nothing  irrational  in  the  opinion  of  those  of  other  times 
and  nations.  The  method,  however,  was  not  without  its 
dangers  to  an  authority-religion.  Since  the  method  is 
morally  and  scientifically  groundless,  it  is  also  utterly  law- 
less and  subjective.  In  the  course  of  history,  diverse  and 
even  contradictory  interpretations  of  Scripture  were  not 
only  possible,  but  actual.  One's  own  good  pleasure  in 
matters  of  faith  could  easily  become  the  norm.  Then  one  of 
the  evils  would  return  from  which,  by  hypothesis,  revelation 
was  to  rescue  man,  namely,  trusting  to  his  own  understand- 
ing in  spite  of  its  folly  and  its  sin.  Hence  the  church  must 
intervene.  She  must  elaborate  a  criterion  for  interpretation. 
For  the  Romanist,  the  line  of  Scripture  interpretation  must 
be  drawn  according  to  the  standard  of  Catholic  faith  and 
ecclesiastical  tradition.  The  synod  of  the  Council  of  Trent 
made  it  ecclesiastical  law  that  no  one  was  to  trust  his  own 
sagacity  in  matters  of  faith  and  practice,  but  everyone  must 
submit  to  ecclesiastical  interpretation,  since  it  belongs  to  the 
church  alone  to  decide  upon  the  true  meaning.'  The  Bible, 
according  to  Bellarmin,^    must  be  interpreted  by  the  same 

1  Council  of  Trent,  Sess.  IV.  2  De  verba  Dei,  3 :  3. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Keligion      73 

spirit  which  indited  it ;  but  where  was  that  Spirit  to  be  found 
save  in  the  official  representatives,  the  assembly  of  bishops 
in  unity  with  Christ  of  the  Catholic  church?' 

The  Reformers^  rejected  allegorical  interpretation,  but  the 
Protestant  confessions  returned  to  it,  in  a  measure.  Socinians 
and  Arminians,  consistent  with  their  Pelagian  proclivities, 
would  acknowledge  nothing  anti-rational  as  result  of  inter- 
pretation. For  example,  if  dogmas  like  the  incarnation  and 
substitutionary  atonement  seem  to  be  in  the  Scriptures,  it  is 
better  to  treat  the  passages  in  which  they  are  found  as  figures 
of  speech,  and  so  be  able  to  give  them  a  difPerent  interpreta- 
tion. But  the  Arminians  asked:  In  cases  where  the  meaning 
of  Scripture  is  doubtful  and  opposite  views  are  possible,  how 
could  one  come  to  a  decision  except  by  preferring  that  mean- 
ino^  which  contained  no  contradiction  to  sound  reason  ?  This 
principle  spread  all  the  more  as  scientific  culture  and  the  so- 
called  vulgar  Aufkldrung  increased.  The  principle,  if  not 
expressed,  was  implied  and  used  by  both  supernaturalists 
and  rationalists;  for  at  this  time  the  difference  between  the 
two  was  only  one  of  degree;  i.  e.,  the  degree  of  subjectivity 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures.     At  this  time  two 

1  There  is  a  movement — certainly  in  France  and  Germany — within  Catholicism 
to  effect  a  reconciliation  between  the  church  and  the  scientific  views  of  the  present. 
But  the  gulf  between  the  spirit  of  modern  science  and  the  spirit  of  Catholicism  is 
greater  than  these  liberals  would  think.  Between  the  principle  of  free  investigation 
— indispensable  to  science,  even  to  biblical  science — and  the  principle  of  an  absolute 
doctrinal  authority — indispensable  to  Catholicism,  even  to  liberal  Catholicism^ 
yawns  an  unbridgeable  gulf.  For  him  who  acknowledges  an  absolute  doctrinal 
authority  there  is  no  region  in  which,  directly  or  indirectly,  the  effects  of  canonical 
decisions  do  not  make  their  official  and  meddlesome  incursions.  But  since  Protes- 
tant orthodoxy  likewise  recognizes  an  infallible  authority,  what  is  true  of  Catholicism 
in  this  particular  is  true  of  it — the  principle  is  the  same — and  all  efforts  to  conceal 
or  "sugar-coat"  that  principle  do  not  mitigate  or  excuse  its  moral  and  scientific 
offensiveness.  No  evasion  is  possible :  either  free  investigation  or  infallible  doc- 
trinal authority ;  the  opposition  in  principle  is  an  exclusive  opposition.  Moreover, 
by  virtue  of  their  principle  itself.  Catholic  and  Protestant  orthodoxy  cannot  change. 
They  can  only  triumph  or — go  down. 

2  Rejecting  authority  of  church  and  of  reason,  the  Protestants  began  to  say  that 
the  Scriptures  are  self-interpreting.  But  this  is  only  a  figure  of  speech.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  Scriptures  can  be  only  object  of  interpretation;  on  the  other,  possibly 
criterion ;  but  the  interpreter  is  the  human  mind- 


74    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

scholars,  Ernesti  and  Semler,  did  much  to  advance  hermeneu- 
tics,  and  yet  they  found  it  expedient  to  seek  some  connecting 
link  between  the  real  meaning  of  biblical  writers  and  the 
meaning  that  interpreters  in  ecclesiastical  interests  had 
found  in  them.  It  amounted  to  a  return  of  the  allegorical 
method  in  the  following  form :  the  sacred  writer,  or  the  person 
whose  words  he  reports,  said  something,  but  he  should  have 
said  something  else;  moreover,  he  would  have  said  some- 
thing else  had  the  people  of  that  early  day  been  as^ 
enlightened  as  modern  interpreters.  But  since  he  did  not,  he 
had  to  adapt  himself  to  the  prepossessions  of  his  contempo- 
raries. As  in  Origen's  day  it  was  allegory,  so  now  it  is 
accommodation  which  transforms  biblical  ideas  into  the  pure 
gold  of  rational  religious  concepts.  God  gave  pure  truth  to 
the  writers;  they  knew  it  to  be  such,  but  they  veiled  or 
modified  it — adapted  it  in  some  way  to  fit  the  condition  and 
culture  of  the  constituency.  At  this  point  great  Spinoza 
comes  into  the  development.'  Much  of  the  Bible,  he  says, 
has  as  little  authority  for  us  as  it  had  for  Jesus  and  his 
apostles.  In  his  rationalistic  way  he  excluded  all  thought 
of  demons  and  angels  as  unreal.  Moreover,  precisely  the 
teaching  ignored  or  excluded  by  the  hypothesis  of  accommo- 
dation had  been  set  forth  in  the  most  detailed  and  serious 
manner,  and  most  frequently,  by  Jesus  and  the  apostles,  and 
hence  they  must  have  acted  against  their  own  ends  to  have  used 
such  a  method.^  He  also  called  attention  to  the  unethical 
element  in  the  principle  of  accommodation.  Besides,  how 
was  one  to  know  where  there  was  accommodation  and  where 
there  was  not?  There  was  no  way  but  to  assume  it.  But 
what  basis  was  there  for  the  assumption,  since  all  men  pay 
tribute  to  their  times,  that  is,  are  historically  conditioned  ? 
And   now   a   great   change    comes   over  the    theory    of 

iSee  his  theologico-political  tractate,  chap.  3. 

"^E.g.,  Matt.  13 :  39 ;  chaps.  24,  25 ;  Luke  10 :  18 ;  Rom.  3 : 2.'5 ;  1  Cor.,  chap.  15 ;  1  Thess. 
4:13  ff. 


The  Formation  of  Authority-Religion      75 

accommodation  in  view  of  these  considerations.  Con- 
scious accommodation  was  transformed  into  unconscious 
accommodation.  Instead  of  the  writers'  adaptation  to  their 
times,  they  shared  in  the  ideas  of  their  time.'  The  upshot 
was  two  parties.  One  said:  "This  I  cannot  believe;  there- 
fore the  biblical  writer  did  not  say  it ;  hence  the  interpreta- 
tion is  not  binding  upon  the  interpreter,  either  religiously,  or 
dogmatically,  or  ecclesiastically."  Another — e.  g.,  Spinoza 
— said  that  it  was  perverse  to  presuppose  the  absolute  divinity 
of  the  Scriptures  as  a  principle  of  interpretion ;  that  it  was 
one  thing  to  investigate  the  minds  of  the  prophets,  another 
to  investigate  the  mind  of  God.  But  since  that  old  day, 
the  theologian  adds:  Historical  interpretation,  the  alone 
scientific,  can  yield  only  historical  results;  but  since,  for 
science,  the  historical  is  the  relative,  the  outcome  for  author- 
ity-religion is  manifest.  The  absolute  biblical  revelation  is 
relativized  by  interpretation.  The  alternative  is  to  return 
to  an  infallible  book,  infallibly  interpreted,  and  infallibly 
appropriated.^ 

iSee  ScHLEiEEMACHEE,  Glaubeiislehre,  Vol.  I,  pp.  224,  223. 

2  In  recent  times  there  is  a  final  form  of  the  theory  of  accommodation,  called 
neither  conscious  nor  unconscious,  but  the  exercise  of  the  pedagogic  sense.  What, 
for  example,  seems  exaggeration  in  the  Scriptures  is  there  for  pedagogic  purposes. 
It  must  be  pointed  out,  however,  that  we  have  here  the  same  old  presupposition 
of  an  infallible  book,  and  that  we  must  approach  it  with  that  prepossession  and 
appropriate  hypothesis. 


CHAPTER  IV 
DISSOLUTION  OF  AUTHORITY -KELIGION 

1.  The  consistent  conception  of  the  supernatural  divinity 
of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  from  the  point  of  view  of  authority- 
religion,  was  presented  in  the  last  chapter.  The  canonical 
books  of  the  Scriptures,  identical  with  the  concept  "Word 
of  God,"  were  immediately  referred  to  the  sole  activity  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  as  their  real  author,  whom  the  human  writers 
of  the  separate  writings  served  as  passive  instruments,  so 
that  the  fides  humana,  based  on  their  own  human  relation 
to  the  content  of  their  writings,  is  of  but  small  importance 
compared  with  the  fides  divina,  based  on  the  testimonium 
S2:)iritus  scmcti.  As  already  indicated,  this  ecclesiastical 
doctrine  of  inspiration  was  gradually  developed  indeed,  but 
with  inner  consequentialness  and  necessity.  As  soon  as  the 
Scriptures  were  declared  to  be  the  sole  sure  source  of  infor- 
mation concerning  the  saving  revelation  of  God,  and  there- 
by the  sole  authority  for  the  knowledge  which  faith  possesses, 
it  was  but  a  simple  consequence  of  the  Protestant  principle 
that,  by  means  of  the  most  rigid  doctrine  of  inspiration  which 
the  mechanical  view  of  the  world  of  the  seventeenth  century 
could  render  congenial.  Scripture  and  Word  of  God  should 
be  immediately  and  completely  identified.  The  conclusion 
which  this  necessitates  is  simple  enough.  No  human  author- 
ity claiming  unconditional  validity  to  come  in  between  man 
and  God — this  is  the  Protestant  principle.  The  Sacred 
Scripture  is  the  sole  source  of  the  knowledge  of  salvation — ■ 
this  was  the  historically  necessary  concrete  apprehension  of 
the  elder  Protestant  formal  principle.  Therefore  the  Scrip- 
tures must  be  conceived  as  immediately  divine,  God  as  their 
sole  author,  and  any  actually  human  mediation  of  their  con- 

76 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion         77 

struction  must  be  excluded.  So  long  as  the  two  premises 
exist,  the  rigid  doctrine  of  inspiration  is  the  only  correct 
conclusion.  For  the  rest,  as  estimated  above,  Protestant 
dogmatics — in  opposition  to  the  Catholic  affirmation  that  the 
Scriptures  were  authenticated  by  the  church,  therefore  de- 
pendent on  the  recognition  of  the  latter — appealed  to  the 
inner  witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit  as  immediate  divine  authen- 
tication, in  the  hearts  of  believers,  of  the  supernatural  divin- 
ity of  the  Sacred  Scriptures.  Here,  then,  is  the  point  at 
which  criticism  must  set  in. 

The  question  could  not  fail  to  arise:  How  is  that  inner 
witness  to  be  recognized  as  divine  and  infallible?  This  con- 
viction that  the  Spirit  witnesses  to  the  immediate  divinity  of 
the  Bible  as  a  whole,  how  can  one  know  that  it  is  a  conviction 
produced  by  the  divine  Spirit,  and  not  rather  by  one's  own 
opinion  or  imagination — by  what  infallible  mark  or  rule  can 
this  be  settled?  This  is  the  shape  the  question  took  for  the 
Arminians.  Biblical  proof-texts,  quite  apart  from  the  ques- 
tion whether  they  are  correctly  interpreted  or  not,  can  prove 
nothing  here,  where  the  question  is  as  to  the  supernatural 
divinity  of  the  Scriptures,  and  therefore  of  the  proof-texts 
themselves.  It  would  be  a  manifest  circle  to  hold,  on  the 
authority  of  the  Bible,  that  a  certain  inner  excitation  is  the 
work  of  the  Spirit,  and  then  to  hold  that  the  Bible  is  divine 
on  the  authority  of  that  inner  excitation.  Besides,  the  Jews 
and  Mohammedans  have  the  same  abstract  right  to  appeal  to 
the  inner  witness  of  the  Spirit  which  declares  to  them  that 
some  of  these  books  are  not  divine.  The  same  inner  witness 
to  his  Bible  which  the  Christian  thinks  he  perceives,  speaks 
in  the  Turk  as  affirming  and  approving  his  Koran — a  proof 
that  it  is  only  the  common  prepossession  which  everyone  has 
imbibed  from  his  childhood  for  the  sacred  books  of  his  reli- 
gion.    So  English  Deists  urged.     Reimarus  said : 

Let  us  suppose  that  a  purely  rational,  suppositiouless  man  has 
never  heard  of  the  Bible,  Koran,  or  sacred  books.     Now  put  the 


78    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Bible  into  his  hands,  and,  instead  of  detecting  an  inner  witness  to 
its  absolute  divinity,  he  would  recognize  specifically  different  ele- 
ments in  it,  parts  of  which  were  extremely  human. ^ 

If  the  opinion  that  this  voice  of  God  speaks  in  the  heart 
of  the  Bible-reader  arises  from  defective  knowledge^  of  the 
human  spirit  and  its  emotions,  the  supposed  detection  of 
such  a  voice  must  be  abandoned  entirely  with  increasing 
psychological  investigation.    The  theologian  Michaelis  wrote : 

I  must  honestly  say  that,  firmly  as  I  am  convinced  of  the  truths 
of  revelation,  I  have  never  in  my  life  detected  such  a  witness  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  And  so  what  one  formerly  called  the  supernatural 
witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit  came  to  be  apprehended  by  the  modern, 
even  supernatujalistic,  theologian  as  the  spiritual,  that  is,  the 
ethico-religious,  energizing  of  one's  nature,  which  the  Christian 
feels  in  the  use  of  the  Scriptures.  But  thus  conceived  this  tes- 
timony proves,  not  the  divine  dignity,  but  the  high  human  worth 
of  the  Scriptures.^ 

In  sum:  Authority-religion  affirms  the  inerrancy  of  the 
Sacred  Scriptures  on  the  assumption  that  their  origin  is  due 
to  inspiration.  But  its  doctrine  of  inspiration  rests  ultimately 
upon  the  testimonium  spiritus  sancti  internum.  It  is  in 
regard  to  this  basis  that  the  critical  questions  first  arise :  Is 
the  entire  Bible  embraced  in  this  inner  witness  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  ?  Does  such  testimony  relate  to  the  assumed  mode 
of  the  origin  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  ?     Does  this  doctrine 

1  Fragmenta,  p.  39. 

2Ancient  psychology  survived  still,  according  to  which  manifestations  of  the 
mysterious  inner  life  of  the  soul,  mental  processes,  were  the  manifestations  of  some 
external  agent.  In  ancient  times  "it  was  not  we  ourselves,  but  a  demon,  an  angel, 
or  a  spirit  that  was  the  efHcient  cause;  sometimes  this  agent  is  conceived  of  as  in- 
timately connected  with  our  soul,  but  at  others  he  is  an  entirely  extraneous  being. 
Here  we  have  the  origin  of  the  conception,  not  only  of  demoniacal  possession,  but  of 
that  of  the  Holy  Spirit."— Weenle,  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I,  p.  6. 

3  Dogmatik,  p.  92.  While  the  above  considerations  are  decisive  against  the 
theory  in  question,  they  must  not  be  misunderstood  and  misapplied.  That  many 
single  utterances  and  whole  connections  of  thought  of  the  Sacred  Scripture  are 
immediately  ailecting  and  convincing  for  a  pious  heart  and  moral  conscience — this 
is  the  testimony  of  all  Christians.  But  this  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  argu- 
ment criticised  above,  which  is  that  the  Holy  Spirit  bears  immediate  testimony  to 
the  supernatural  divinity  of  the  book  as  a  whole. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion         79 

«,ccord  with  the  actual  character  of  these  Scriptures,  and 
with  the  express  declarations  of  their  human  authors  ?  From 
interrogation  of  the  Christian  consciousness  in  regard  to 
this  matter,  as  well  as  from  an  examination  of  the  historic 
and  literary  facts,  it  becomes  clear  that  an  affirmative  answer 
cannot  be  given  to  these  questions. 

Is  faith  in  the  divinity  of  the  Bible,  then,  to  be  given 
up  ?  By  no  means,  cry  the  Socinians  and  Arminians. 
Apart  from  the  outer  witness  of  the  church  and  the  inner 
witness  of  the  Spirit,  and  more  surely  than  by  both,  the 
supernatural  divinity  of  the  biblical  books  is  to  be  proved 
by  their  genuineness,  and  the  truth  of  their  doctrines  is  to 
be  proved  by  the  accuracy  of  biblical  history ;  in  a  word,  the 
Jides  divina  is  to  be  proved  by  the  fides  humana.  If,  as 
the  evangelists  narrate,  Christ  did  so  many  deeds  which 
transcend  the  limits  of  nature  and  human  nature,  and  if  he 
rose  from  the  dead,  then  it  follows  that  everything  that  he 
taught  must  be  true  and  divine;  for  God  would  not  have 
given  him  this  power  had  he  taught  untruth.  The  divine 
purpose  of  the  miracles  was  to  confirm  all  that  Jesus  taught. 
What  is  thus  true  of  Jesus  was  true  of  the  apostles  as  well, 
and  on  this  account  their  teaching  must  likewise  be  authority 
for  us.  But  now  the  accuracy  of  the  biblical  narratives, 
especially  of  the  evangelical  narratives,  is  capable  of  thorough 
proof.  The  evangelists,  for  example,  could  and  would  tell 
the  truth.  They  could,  for  they  were  eye-  and  ear -witnesses 
of  the  events  which  they  narrate;  or  else  were  companions 
of  those  that  were;  or  else,  like  Paul,  had  direct  revelation 
which  took  the  place  of  personal  intercourse  with  Jesus. 
Therefore,  if  their  writings  are  not  accurate  and  trustworthy, 
no  writings  of  antiquity  can  be  thought  of  as  true.  But 
they  would  tell  the  truth,  and  only  the  truth.  For  one  thing, 
the  religion  they  propagated  forbade  lying.  For  another 
thing,  what  motive  could  they  have  had  for  lying  ?     And,  still 


80    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

further,  their  religion  was  offensive  to  the  people  they  sought 
to  win;  this  would  not  have  been  the  case  had  they  lied,  for 
in  that  case  they  would  have  made  the  religion  attractive. 
And,  besides  all  this,  even  if  they  had  set  out  to  lie,  they 
could  not  have  invented  such  stories  as  the  miraculous  birth, 
the  resurrection,  and  the  healing  with  a  word.'  In  a  word, 
the  contention  with  which  we  have  now  to  do  in  this  form  of 
the  argument  is  that  the  evidence  proves  historicity,  and 
that  historicity  proves  the  supernatural  divinity  of  the  Book. 

Here,  then,  is  the  new  ground  upon  which  was  built  the 
supernatural  divinity  of  the  book-religion.  But,  strange  to 
say,  the  very  first  authors  of  this  method  of  proof  were  not 
quite  sure  that  the  new  ground  was  firm.  Faustus  Socinus 
put  the  main  stress  on  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  yet  he  him- 
self raises  the  question  whether  the  resurrection  stories  might 
not  be  accounted  for  from  internal  causes.  Again,  while  he 
finds  Mark  entirely  trustworthy — since  Mark  was  a  com- 
panion of  Peter — still  he  says  he  is  glad  Mark  does  not 
give  any  doctrines  of  importance  which  do  not  belong  to 
Matthew  and  John,  And  while  Episcopius  doubts  the 
genuineness  of  no  single  book  of  the  New  Testament,  he  yet 
finds  it  worth  while  to  assume  that  only  one  is  genuine.  He 
proposes  to  found  dogmatic  faith  on  historical  faith,  and  yet 
knows  that  only  probability  belongs  to  the  latter. 

It  is  in  this  connection  that,  much  later,  Lessing's  inci- 
sive argumentation  powerfully  influenced  the  development. 
Lessing  distinguished  between  historical  belief  and  religious 
faith,  an  epoch-making  distinction.  The  reports  which  we 
have  of  ancient  predictions  and  miracles  can  at  best  be  no 
more  reliable  than  it  is  possible  for  historical  truths  to  be ;  and 
if  historical  truths  cannot  be  demonstrated,  neither  must 
they  be  believed  in  as  firmly  as  demonstrated  truths.  But 
if  they    are  only  so    reliable,   why    does    one    make    them 

1  Thus  Socinus  and  Limborch. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion  81 

infinitely  more  reliable  in  using  them  ?  Because,  he  answers, 
one  builds  on  them  quite  other  and  more  things  than  one 
is  warranted  in  building  on  truths  which  are  only  historically 
proved.  If  no  historical  truth  can  be  demonstrated, 
then  nothing  can  be  demonstrated  through  historical 
truths.  That  is  (Lessing's  famous  saying):  "Accidental 
truths  of  history  can  never  become  proof  of  necessary 
truths  of  reason."  Lessing  does  not  deny  that  prophecies 
were  fulfilled  in  Christ,  that  Christ  did  miracles;  he  denied 
that  miracles  could  be  proved,  since  their  truth  had  ceased 
to  be  proved  by  present  miracles ;  he  denied  that  they  could 
and  should  obligate  him  to  the  least  faith  in  Christ's  teach- 
ings, since  they  are  nothing  but  reports  of  miracles.  He 
accepted  these  teachings  on  other  grounds.  Moreover,  what 
is  it  to  hold  an  historical  proposition  for  true;  to  believe  an 
historical  truth  ?  Is  it  in  any  least  particle  anything  other 
than  to  allow  this  proposition,  this  truth,  validity;  to  have 
nothing  to  urge  against  it  ?  Is  it  to  build  another  historical 
truth  thereon,  to  deduce  another  historical  truth  therefrom  ? 
Suppose — -so  Lessing  continues  —  I  have  nothing  to  urge 
historically  against  the  proposition  that  Christ  raised  the 
dead;  must  I  on  that  account  hold  that  God  had  a  Son, 
consubstantial  with  himself  ?  What  is  the  connection 
between  my  inability  to  urge  anything  worth  while  against 
the  witness  to  the  former  and  my  obligation  to  believe  some- 
thing against  which  my  reason  rebels  ?  Because  I  have 
nothing  to  urge  historically  against  Christ's  own  resurrec- 
tion, must  I  therefore  hold  that  just  this  risen  Christ  was  the 
Son  of  God  ?  One  must  not  leap  from  historical  truths  into 
an  entirely  different  class  of  truths.  But  it  may  be  said 
that  Christ,  who  raised  the  dead  and  was  himself  raised, 
himself  declared  that  God  has  a  Son  of  the  same  essence, 
and  that  he  is  that  Son.  Good ;  but  that  Christ  said  this  is, 
alas,  no  more  than  historically  certain.      But  do  you  pursue 


82    Try.  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 


me  furtL  ji  and  say:  "Oh,  but  tLis  is  more  than  historically 
certain,  for  inspired  historians  who  cannot  err  vouch  for  it." 
Alas,  alas,  it  is  only  historically  certain  that  these  historians 
were  inspired  and  could  not  err!  "This,  this,  is  the  nasty 
broad  ditch  over  which  I  cannot  bound,  often  and  earnestly 
as  I  have  made  the  leap.  If  anyone  can  help  me,  let  him 
do  it,  I  beseech  him."  ^ 

Lessing's  contention,  to  recapitulate,  is  then  that,  grant- 
ing the  historical  character  of  the  biblical  books,  they  could 
never  give  more  than  extreme  probability,  but  that  religious 
faith  requires  certainty.  He  recognizes — and  it  is  of  abid- 
ing and  momentous  importance — the  heterogeneity  of  his- 
toric belief  and  religious  faith.  "  When  will  one  cease  to 
hang  nothing  less  than  all  eternity  on  a  spider's  thread?" 
he  cries.  Because  no  trustworthy  witness  can  be  produced 
against  a  miracle,  to  require  a  change  in  all  our  metaphysical 
and  moral  concepts,  and  in  fundamental  ideas  of  the  nature  of 
deity — this,  according  to  Lessing,  is  a  Mera/Sacri?  et?  dXXo 
^evo<i,  or  else  he  does  not  know  what  Aristotle  meant  by  these 
words. 

In  view  of  these  considerations,  the  orthodox  concept  of 
inspiration  and  its  application  to  biblical  writings  were 
variously  limited,  though  such  limitation  met  at  first  with 
passionate  opposition.  Verbal  inspiration  was  first  attacked, 
and  inspiration  conceded  only  to  the  content  of  Sacred 
Scripture.  But  such  capitulation  once  begun  must  go  on  to 
the  end;  so  further  distinctions  were  made  as  to  prophecy, 
history,  and  doctrine.  The  biblical  authors  received  prophecy 
originally  from  revelation  indeed,  but  wrote  it  down  from 
memory,  caring  only  for  content,  not  for  words.  As  to 
writing  history,  there  was  no  need  of  inspiration,  since 
memory  and  laborious  investigation  would  suffice;  besides, 

1  Lessing,  Ueher  den  Beweis  des  Geistes  u7Ld  der  Kraft,  of  which  the  above  is  a 
reproduction. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Eeligion         83 

inspiration  cannot  be  affirmed  without  contradicting  some  of 
the  biblical  writers  themselves,  such  as  Luke.  In  the  matter 
of  doctrine,  Spinoza  was  followed,  who  held  that  the  doctrines 
were  composed  by  means  of  the  "natural  light"  in  co-opera- 
tion with  the  divine  Spirit.  Others  fell  upon  other  make- 
shifts, such  as  distinguishing  different  degrees  of  inspiration : 
the  will  to  write;  the  content  to  be  set  forth;  the  words;  the 
arrangement  of  the  material  and  the  words.  It  was  thus 
that  what  was  called  the  new  supernaturalism  was  ushered 
in.  "The  divine  impulse  to  write"  was  presupposed  only 
in  cases  where  the  author  felt  he  had  a  divine  command.  In 
all  other  cases  a  natural  co-operation  of  outward  occasion 
with  inner  psychological  causes  was  assumed.  "The  sug- 
gestion of  subject-matter"  became  direction;  i.  e.,  the  posi- 
tive task  of  inspiring  the  ideas  became  the  negative  task  of 
detention  from  errors.  "Suggestion  of  words"  came  to  be 
the  inspiration,  not  of  words,  but  of  the  arrangement  of 
materials.  Later  this  inspiration  was  reduced  to  protection 
from  error  and  impropriety,  leaving  the  biblical  author  his 
peculiarities,  and  therewith  his  individual  defects  of  exposi- 
tion, and  not  keeping  him  from  mixing  into  his  narrative 
such  things  as  do  not  belong  to  religion. 

But  in  the  process  of  the  evolution  of  this  doctrine  the 
new  supernaturalism  was  but  a  station  on  the  way  to  the 
entire  elimination  of  the  supernatural,  in  the  orthodox 
sense  of  that  word.  For  at  length  the  biblical  writers  in 
their  authorship  were  put  upon  a  par  with  others:  their 
"impulse"  came  from  the  inner  mood  and  the  outer  occasion ; 
their  thoughts,  not  unmixed  with  error,  came  from  the  treas- 
ure of  their  minds  and  hearts;  their  words  came  from  their 
culture  and  their  customs.  To  be  sure,  this  did  not  mean 
that  the  derivation  of  the  Scriptures  from  God  as  primary 
author  was  given  up;  but  they  came  from  him,  however,  only 
in  the  sense  that  all  other  good  comes  from  him.     It  was  in 


84    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

and  through  the  dispensation  of  his  providence  that  the 
biblical  authors  were  enabled  and  occasioned  to  the  compo- 
sition of  their  writings. 

At  this  point  it  is  manifest  that  the  wall  of  partition  is 
broken  down  between  "inspired"  and  uninspired  writings. 
All  that  remained  to  be  said  was  that  the  peculiar  nature  of 
Christianity  comes  to  its  best  expression  in  the  beginning/ 
on  the  general  presupposition  that  the  original  meaning  of 
an  historical  phenomenon  is  contained  most  powerfully  and 
most  purely  in  its  beginning.  At  all  events,  such  a  presup- 
position is  supposed  to  have  unconditioned  validity  as  regards 
prophetico-ethical  religions,  which  receive  their  whole  life 
from  the  personalities  founding  them.  From  this  point  of 
view,  the  primitive  period  is  the  "classic"  period,  and  the 
primitive  literature  is  "classic"  and  normative  literature. 

This  now  was  an  epoch-making  new  derivation  of  the 
normative  dignity  of  the  Scriptures.  But  it  did  not  last. 
Hegel  shook  confidence  in  it  with  his  proposition:  "Nothing, 
religion  as  little  as  science,  is  full-grown  at  its  beginning; 
not  the  first,  but  the  last  expression  of  a  principle,  upon  the 
hypothesis  of  progress  and  evolution,  is  the  best  expression ; 
consequently  not  the  first  but  the  last  literary  expression  is 
to  be  accorded  normative  value."  Schleiermacher  answered 
this;  Strauss  answered  Schleiermacher;  and  indeed  there  we 
are  today  still.  Hegelian  philosophy  was  rife  at  the  time; 
its  contention  was  that  reality  is  process,  "becoming,"  and 
progress.  Thus  not  the  first  but  the  last  could  be  final.' 
Hegel  said  that  the  New  Testament  books  are  not  the  prin- 
ciple or  idea  of  Christianity  itself,  but  the  earliest  expression 
of  that  principle,  documents  of  the  first  imperfect  attempt  to 
represent  the  principle  to  the  imagination  and  the  life ;  and 
if  it   be  said  that  there  is  no  admixture  of  later  errors  in 

1  Schleiermacher,  Glaubenslehre,  Vol.  II.  pp.  129  ff.,  337  £E. 

2  Hegel,  Phenomenologie  des  Geistes,  p,  10. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion  85 

the  exposition,  he  would  reply  that  still  for  all  that  these 
documents  taste  of  the  soil  of  their  origin,  Judaism,  and 
hence  are  corrupted  from  the  outset.  Would  you  make  such 
books  norm  of  all  that  is  Christian?  Would  you  make  the 
most  primitive  the  most  normative  ?  It  would  be,  he  replies, 
as  if  you  sought  the  ideal  of  the  man  in  the  child,  or  the 
ideal  of  art  in  primitive  attempts! 

We  have  here  now  an  antinomy  that  is  sharp  enough. 
On  the  one  side,  Schleiermacher  exhibits  the  beginnings  of 
an  historical  phenomenon  as  the  most  perfect  exposition  of 
its  principle ;  on  the  other  side,  Hegel  as  the  most  imperfect, 
that  is,  incomplete.  Schleiermacher  courageously  admits 
the  latter,  yet  seeks  to  prove  the  former.  In  other  words,  he 
acknowledges  the  universal  validity  of  the  law  that  in  the 
evolutionary  series  the  later  is  more  perfect  than  the  earlier ; 
yet  in  reference  to  Christianity  he  exalts  the  first  literary 
exposition  as  norm  for  all  future  developments.  And  his 
solution  of  the  antinomy  is  as  follows:  If  you  take  the  total 
primitive  manifestation  and  compare  it  with  the  total  later 
manifestation  in  any  cross-section  of  either  of  these,  the 
later  will  be  seen  to  be  more  perfect  than  the  earlier;  but  the 
total  sum  of  the  manifestation  in  either  case  is  not  inspired, 
and  therefore  not  normal ;  only  a  part  is  inspired  and  normal, 
and  this  part,  which  is  the  first  part,  is  unsurpassable  and 
incomparable.  Put  together  the  total  mass  of  the  primitive 
production,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  the  later  production  is 
purer  than  this.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  one  cannot  dis- 
till and  isolate  out  of  the  total  primitive  manifestation  what 
is  definitively  superior,  namely,  the  preaching  and  writing  of 
the  immediate  disciples  of  Christ,  in  the  case  of  whom  the 
danger  of  an  ignorant  corrupting  influence  of  their  earlier 
Jewish  forms  of  life  upon  the  thought  of  what  was  Christian, 
was  warded  off  in  the  degree  that  they  stood  close  to  Christ 
and  cherished  the  purifying  memory  of  the   whole  Christ. 


86    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 


Thus  they   would  express  better  and  more  fully  the  words 
and  thoughts  of  Christ. 

Hegel  opposed  Schleiermacher,  bringing  out  the  objection 
that  he  does  no  justice  to  one  side  of  the  antinomy,  which  he 
admits  to  be  true.  Instead  of  its  being  the  immediate,  it  is 
the  mediated,  influence  of  Christ  which  communicates  to  the 
New  Testament  writings  this  supposed  normative  validity  for 
all  times.  But  in  this  way  the  Founder  of  Christianity  is 
antecedently  and  uncritically  excepted  from  the  previously 
admitted  law  of  the  relative  imperfection  or  incompleteness 
of  all  beginnings.  And  it  may  be  added  that  in  subsequent 
times  the  historical  conditionateness  of  Jesus,  and  the  con- 
sequent relativity  of  his  teachings  and  of  the  documents 
reflecting  that  teaching,  have  begun  to  receive  candid 
consideration. 

Strauss  said  that  Hegel  and  Schleiermacher  had  made 
nothing  out  of  this  matter,  and  that  he  could  get  at  it  in  a 
different  way.  The  error  is  in  equating  the  Christian  spirit 
with  the  absolute  spirit,  on  the  old  orthodox  ground ;  but  we 
have  left  that  territory  now.  We  are  on  the  soil  of  modern 
philosophy  of  religion.  Here  it  appears  that  the  Christian 
spirit  is  only  one  of  the  manifold  forms  of  the  absolute 
spirit.  Mohammedanism,  for  example,  is  another.  But  in 
this  case  the  explication  of  the  absolute  spirit  yields  a  norm 
for  this  religion  somewhere  just  as  certainly  as  is  the  case 
with  the  Christian  religion.  Hence,  there  are  norms  and 
norms;  on  which  account  it  would  seem  as  if  it  were  not 
worth  while  to  quarrel  over  the  question.  Furthermore,  if 
the  Christian  spirit  is  only  one  of  the  manifold  forms  of  the 
absolute  spirit,  then  the  latter  can  assume  other  forms  of 
manifestation  after  Christianity  has  passed  away,  as  it  did 
before  Christianity  came  into  existence ;  and  that  Christianity 
will  not  pass  away,  as  Schleiermacher  naively  assumes  in 
his  Glaubenslehre,  is  a  thing  not  to  be   presupposed,  but 


Dissolution  op  Authority-Religion         87 

proved.  But  if  it  is  ever  proved,  it  must  be  proved  more 
satisfactorily  than  Hegel  has  done  in  his  treatment  of 
Christianity  as  the  absolute  religion,  thereby  arriving  at 
conclusions  which  negate  his  presuppositions! 

I  am  aware  that  the  conclusion  of  the  above  paragraph 
transcends  the  process  of  dissolution  of  the  dogma  of  inspira- 
tion, but  it  is  introduced  to  indicate  the  situation  which 
ensued  upon  its  dissolution,  as  well  as  the  new  problem  which 
follows  upon  the  decay  of  the  belief  in  infallibility  which 
reposed  upon  biblical  inspiration.  As  I  leave  the  subject,  I 
may  gather  up  the  results  of  the  immanent  criticism  of  the 
inspiration  dogma  in  the  following  comprehensive  statement: 
Verbal  inspiration  was  first  limited  to  sayings  introduced 
as  "Word  of  God;"  then  completely  given  up;  inspiration 
was  next  conceived  as  a  positive  divine  guidance  in  the 
writing-down  of  what  was  supernaturally  revealed;  then  it 
was  changed  to  a  mere  negative  protection  from  error;  then, 
next,  the  inerrancy  of  the  Scripture  itself  was  surrendered  bit 
by  bit — limited  at  first  to  the  redemptively  necessary  doc- 
trines, then  to  their  essentially  religious  content ;  finally,  the 
personal  inerrancy  of  the  biblical  authors  was  reduced  to  the 
inerrancy  of  Jesus,  and  that  of  the  latter,  again,  limited  to 
the  region  of  religious  truth.  Such,  in  brief,  is  the  inner 
history  of  the  dogma  of  inspiration.  "Inspiration"  of  the 
Book  is  untrue  historically  and  impossible  psychologically.^/, 

2.  It  is  customary  in  ecclesiastical  Protestant  circles  to 
use  the  phrase  "Word  of  God"  to  signify  revelation  of  God. 

1  We  still  have  phrases  like  "the  divine-human  character"  of  the  Book,  "plenary- 
inspiration  ;"  but  their  vagueness,  their  diplomatic  ambiguity,  has  become  apparent, 
and  they  are  shorn  of  strength.  In  the  nature  of  the  case,  these  efforts  to  patch  up 
must  fail.  For  if  the  Book  is  in  very  fact  one  book,  and  God  in  very  fact  its  sole 
author  to  the  exclusion  of  human  coactivity,  then  it  is  in  very  fact  authoritative  in 
every  word  and  absolutely  binding.  As  I  have  said,  the  orthodox  theory  alone  consist- 
ently supports  this  position.  But  if  man  is  claimed  to  be  active  and  not  passive  in 
the  ijroduction  of  the  Book,  as  any  modification  of  the  theory  seeks  to  hold,  then  that 
activity  is  after  all  illusion,  and  God  the  sole  author;  or  else  it  is  realitij,  in  which 
case  the  divinity  and  absoluteness  of  the  Book  are  gone.  So  I  say  all  "doctoring"  of 
the  theory  is  by  so  much  a  destruction  of  the  theory.    Sit  ut  est  aut  non  sit. 


88    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

The  canon  of  Scripture  is  called  "Word  of  God,"  and  hence 
"sacred."  For  Catholics,  "tradition,"  written  and  oral,  is 
likewise  valued  as  "Word  of  God."  Without  going  into 
details,  it  may  be  roughly  said  that,  while  this  tradition  was 
for  Catholics  to  be  strictly  obeyed  in  all  matters  of  faith, 
custom,  and  ecclesiastical  life  in  general,  its  authority  was 
repudiated  by  Protestants,  and  only  biblical  tradition  was 
"Word  of  God."  It  became  a  polemical  necessity  for  Prot- 
estants to  maintain  that  there  was  no  "Word  of  God"  out- 
side of  the  Bible,  and  nothing  but  "Word  of  God"  in  the 
Bible;  that  is,  "Word  of  God"  and  Bible  are  coextensive. 
But  in  view  of  the  development  sketched  briefly  above,  it  is 
clear  that  the  concept  "Word  of  God"  little  by  little  came  to 
be  volatilized  as  to  content  until  only  a  vague  and  figurative 
sense  was  left  to  it. 

Are  canon  and  "Word  of  God"  coincident,  as  authority- 
religion  holds  ?  It  is  the  verdict  of  a  long  history  which  we 
now  seek  to  outline.  Thought  upon  the  subject  was  first 
dogmatico-theological,  afterward  historico-critical. 

To  the  former  process  of  thought  it  became  evident  that 
the  designation  "Word  of  God"  is  not  in  its  full  scope 
applicable  to  the  canon.  For  one  thing,  whole  books,  for 
another,  single  constituents  of  books,  show  a  character  that 
was  held  to  be  out  of  harmony  with  that  designation.  Long 
ago  opponents  of  Christianity,  like  Celsus,  Porphyry,  Julian, 
urged  that  the  Old  Testament  did  not  sustain  this  high  rank 
in  all  its  parts.  And  even  among  the  friends  of  Christianity 
scruples  arose  very  early  concerning  the  creation  stories,  the 
anthropopathic  ideas  of  deity,  the  revolting  narratives  of  Lot, 
Judah,  and  the  like.  Marcion  in  particular  found  it  quite 
impossible  for  him  to  believe  that  the  Old  Testament  God 
was  the  same  as  that  of  the  New  Testament.  In  evidence  of 
which  he  had  much  to  say  of  the  anthropomorphisms,  the 
anthropopathy,  the  movement  from  place  to  place,  the  igno- 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion         89 

ranee,  the  repentance,  the  rage,  the  envy  and  jealousy,  the 
violation  of  his  own  law,  of  the  Old  Testament  God.  He 
insisted  that  the  element  of  particularism  in  the  Messiah 
even  of  the  prophets  showed  that  being  to  be  different  from 
the  Christ  of  the  gospels,  the  Prince  of  Peace,  who  would 
lead  all  mankind,  not  to  earthly  good  fortune,  as  Old  Testa- 
ment hope  expected,  but  to  eternal  blessedness.  Accordingly, 
Marcion  conceived  the  Old  Testament,  not  as  "Word  of  God," 
but  even  as  the  revelation  of  a  Demiurge. 

This  polemic  against  the  Old  Testament — in  which,  later, 
others  participated  from  time  to  time' — found  most  influential 
opponents.^  But  even  the  opposition  admitted  that  the  Old 
Testament  sacrificial  system  was  not  only  done  away  with,  but 
was  really  never  founded  by  God  at  all,  having  had  an  undivine 
origin.  It  also  admitted  that  some  of  the  earthly  promises 
of  the  Old  Testament,  especially  the  favor  in  which  cruel 
warriors  were  held  by  God,  and  such  things,  were  all 
incompatible  with  the  idea  of  the  true  God.  Furthermore, 
those  defenders  of  the  Old  Testament  resorted  to  the  allesfori- 
cal  method  of  interpretation — which,  like  charity,  has  ever 
been  made  to  cover  a  multitude  of  sins — which  enabled  them 
to  put  even  an  opposite  content  in  things,  so  that  what  was 
not  worthy  of  God  could  thus  be  made  so  in  their  opinion. 
Sometimes  it  was  seen  that  two  opposite  kinds  of  passages 
could  not  possibly  proceed  from  the  same  divine  author;  in 
which  case  the  difficulty  was  surmounted  by  deciding  that  the 
passage  worthy  of  God  was,  of  course,  the  one  that  was 
divine.  But  what  does  this  signify?  Evidently  that  in 
order  to  save  the  divine  "authenticity"  of  the  Old  Testament 
they  sacrificed  its  "integrity." 

It  must  be  granted  that  much  in  those  old  pagan  hereti- 
cal reproaches  rested  on   misunderstanding,    and  also  that 

^E.  g.,  Apelles  aud  certain  Gnostic  sects. 
2£.  g.,  the  Clementine  Homilies. 


90    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

much    of   what  the   orthodox   teachers   said    in    reply  was 
pertinent.^ 

And  yet  it  must  be  granted  as  well  that  the  orthodox 
teachers  were  not  in  a  position  to  do  away  with  all  the 
offense.  Their  opponents  felt  that  there  was  force  in  their 
observation  that  the  frank  narrative  of  even  the  weaknesses 
and  errors  of  their  great  men  testified  to  the  honesty  of  Old 
Testament  writers,  and  made  them  even  more  trustworthy. 
But  when  they  went  on  to  say  that  actions  of  that  kind  were 
nowhere  praised  if  not  blamed,  the  opponents  answered  that, 
for  one  thing,  one  could  not  quite  expect  the  latter;  for 
another,  that  the  manner,  e.  g.,  in  which  the  stratagem  of 
Rebecca  and  Jacob  was  delineated,  indicated  a  tacit  approval 
of  that  performance.  Besides,  the  main  question  was  whether 
God,  if  he  inspired  a  canon  for  the  religious  instruction  of 
humanity,  would  have  chosen  such  stories  as  that,  e.  g.,  of 
Lot  and  his  daughters.  It  was  declared  that  the  way  Origen 
excused  such  stories  was  morally  very  weak,  and  that  always 
the  last  resort  for  him  and  his  kind  was  to  hasten  over  the 
literal  meaning  as  quickly  as  possible  to  a  spiritual  meaning, 
or  a  figurative  one  at  least,  and,  in  addition,  that  the  divine 
condescension  was  made  to  excuse  all  the  anthropomorphisms 
and  anthropopathies.  It  was  believed  also  that  the  church 
fathers'  insistence  upon  the  historical  meaning  of  many 
narratives  as  divine — narratives  which  Origen  volatilized 
allegorically — showed  simply  a  lower  stage  of  culture,  partly 
philosophical,  partly  moral,  and  a  greater  dominion  of  the  bib- 
lical letter  over  them.     The  teachers  of  the  Antiochian  school 

1  It  must  be  borne  ia  mind  that  our  present  question  is  as  to  whether  the  canon 
is  "Word  of  God"  in  the  strict  and  only  sense  of  the  supernaturalism  of  authority- 
religion.  Therefore  appreciative  reference — wliich  would  be  a  delight  to  make,  in 
another  connection — to  the  comparative  excellence  of  the  features  under  review  in 
their  contemporaneous  setting,  to  their  permanent  pedagogic  value  for  religious  and 
moral  education,  constitutes  no  rebuttal  of  the  thesis  that  such  writings  are  not 
immediately  "Word  of  God."  Even  if  historical  sense  and  appreciation  had  been 
developed  in  that  early  church,  still  the  ethico-logical  and  dogmatico-theological 
strictures  sketched  above  would  have  been  legitimate  and  decisive  against  the 
divinity  of  the  canon  as  such. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion  91 

who  turned  from  allegorical  to  grammatical  exegesis  doubted 
the  canonicity  and  holiness  of  some  biblical  books;  e.  f/., 
Theodore  of  Mopsuestia  rejected  the  Song  of  Solomon. 

Much  less  in  modern  times,  with  the  birth  of  the  histori- 
cal spirit,  improved  exegesis,  and  purified  religious  and 
moral  conceptions,  could  the  whole  scope  of  the  Bible  be 
held  to  be  "Word  of  God"  in  the  strict  orthodox  sense  of 
the  phrase. 

Without  further  discussion  of  the  reason  why,  one  may 
begin  with  mentioning  the  heroic  stroke  of  criticism  with 
which  the  Protestants  banished  the  so-called  apocryphal 
books  from  the  canon.  But  Spinoza  shook  his  head  over 
the  Protestant  choice  which  excluded  the  book  of  Wisdom 
and  Tobias,  and  yet  kept  the  book  of  Chronicles  as  Word  of 
God.*  He  held  that  a  writing  was  Word  of  God  only  so 
far  as  it  contained  fundamental  truths  of  religion,  or  the 
universally  valid  law  of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man.^  There- 
fore equal  value  was  not  to  be  attributed  to  books  and  parts 
of  books.^ 

But  it  was  the  Protestant  distinction  between  canonical 
and  apocryphal  writings,  and  the  free  subjective  judgment 
of  Luther  concerning  several  of  the  canonical  books  even — ■ 
it  was  this  to  which  those  infra-ecclesiastical  theologians 
appealed  who  thought  that  they  were  obliged  by  the  facts  to 
deny  the  dignity  of  "Word  of  God"  to  many  parts  of  the 
Bible.  To  say  that  word  of  canon  is  "Word  of  God" 
seemed  to  Luther  to  be  a  return  to  Catholicism,  since  it  was 
on  the  external  authority  of  the  Catholic  church  that  the 

iFrom  Schaaeschmidt's  German  translation  at  hand  I  quote:  "Ich  wundere 
michsogar,weshalbsieunterdieheiligen  Bucheraufgenommen  worden  sind,ob.?leich 
man  das  Buch  der  Weisheit,  den  Tobias  und  die  anderen  Apocryphen  von  dem  der 
heiligen  Schriften  ausschloss"  (Theol.  Polit.  Tract.,  chap,  x,  p.  156). 

"^Ibid.,  chap.  xii. 

3  Ibid.,  chap,  v.,  pp.  86, 87.  The  English  deists,  at  times  mockingly,  the  Germans 
Edelmann  and  Reimarus,  always  seriously,  agreed  on  this  point  in  the  main  with 
Celsus  and  Julian. 


92    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

statement  was  made.  But,  positively,  we  can  include  in 
the  canon  all  that  sets  forth  Christ,  and  "it  is  only  myself 
that  can  decide  as  to  the  latter.'"  Thus  Luther  makes 
his  free  subjective  judgment  regulative  in  delimiting  and 
employing  the  canon.  To  be  sure,  his  is  a  dogmatic  rather 
than  an  historical  criticism.  He  would  limit  "Word 
of  God"  to  cardinal  religious  matters.  In  this  last  pur- 
pose Arminians  and  Socinians  shared.'  Still  later,  George 
Calixtus,  more  definitely,  but  yet  more  mildly,  restricted 
the  divine  in  the  Bible  to  that  which  was  essentially 
redemptive,  not  denying  a  negative  protection  from  error 
for  the  rest.  Beneath  the  surface  there  is  something 
that  might  without  much  extravagance  be  called  epoch- 
making  in  all  this,  viz.,  the  appreciation  of  the  Bible,  not 
from  the  mode  of  its  origin,  but  from  the  end  that  it  serves 
— "not  by  its  roots,  but  by  its  fruits."  The  criterion  of  miracu- 
lous supernaturalism  according  to  authority-religion  yields 
to  the  criterion  of  serviceability.  Subsequently,  Semler 
supported  the  position  that  the  criterion  imputed  to  be 
"Word  of  God"  can  be  no  other  than  the  purpose  or  end  to 
be  attained.  That  end,  he  said,  was  the  instruction  of 
entire  humanity  in  an  easier  and  surer  way  in  all  religious 

lit  is  only  with  caution  and  reservation  that  Protestantism  can  be  designated  as 
regress  to  the  Scriptures.  True,  Luther  did  go  back  to  the  Scriptures,  but 
to  do  this  was  of  itself  not  unjustified  in  the  Catholic  system.  The  Scriptures 
also  were  ever  acknowledged  as  authority  in  the  Roman  church.  The  new  thing 
with  Luther  was  his  special  understanding  of  the  Scriptures,  which  was  due  to 
the  special  way  in  which  he  put  the  problem.  The  peculiar  thing  was  that  ho 
did  not  allow  himself  to  be  bound  down  to  the  ecclesiastical  interpretation,  that 
he  employed  the  Scriptures  as  critical  principle  according  to  which  church 
doctrine  was  to  be  evaluated.  To  distinguish  fundamentally  between  Scrip- 
ture and  church  doctrine  was  new.  New  also  and  especially  — qualified,  indeed,  by 
what  was  said  a  few  pages  back— was  his  unwillingness  to  exempt  the  canon  from 
criticism.  His  criticism  was  much  less  historical  than  pragmatic,  and  he  accorded 
worth  only  to  Scriptures  which  "Christum  trieb,"  i.  e.,  which  treated  in  a  v/ay  that 
he  held  to  be  correct,  that  which  he  viewed  as  the  center  of  Christianity.  It  cannot 
be  denied  that  the  principle  of  the  redemptive  certainty  of  the  individual  enjoyed 
primacy  with  Luther,  and  that  the  Scriptures  were  criticised  from  the  point  of  view 
of  this  experience- graded  according  as  they  reflected  or  ministered  to  this  expe- 
rience.   Canonicalness  was  accidental,  to  his  way  of  looking  at  the  matter. 

2Faustus  Soc,  De  auctorite  S.  Scripturae,  chaps,  i,  iv,  Episcop.  Inst.,  IV,  1. 


Dissolution  of  Authoeity-Keligion         93 

and  moral  truth.  A  writing  that  has  nothing  thus  service- 
able in  it  cannot  be  Word  of  God.  But  Semler  could  see 
nothing  thus  serviceable  in  Joshua,  Judges,  Ruth,  Samuel, 
Kings,  Esther,  Song  of  Solomon,  the  Revelations,  and  many 
parts  of  other  biblical  books.  History,  now  of  family,  now  of 
nation,  was  without  universal  interest.  Ideas  obtained  in 
them  that  were  partly  mythical,  partly  defective  and  long 
gone  by — ideas  also  contrary  to  the  idea  af  God,  and  dispo- 
sitions out  of  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  Christ.  All  books 
and  parts  of  books  of  this  nature  Semler  did  not  reckon  as 
"Word  of  God,"  and  hence  he  gave  the  latter  a  narrower 
scope  than  the  Bible.'  It  may  be  added  that  the  modern 
man,  not  indeed  following  Semler  in  much  of  his  unsympa- 
thetic rationalism,  yet  supports  him  in  this  conclusion. 

The  exigencies  of  the  times  extorted  this  concession. 
The  shell  was  sacrificed  to  save  the  kernel.  It  was  in  this 
spirit  and  with  these  apologetic  tactics  that  Lessing  met  the 
Wolfenbiitler's  attack  upon  the  Bible  and  Christianity.  The 
Bible  is  not  religion;  it  only  contains  religion.  Against 
Gotze's  contention  that  much  in  the  Bible  that  did  not 
belong  to  the  essence  of  religion  was  yet  there  for  the  pur- 
pose of  elucidation  and  confirmation  of  the  main  matter, 
Lessing  insisted  that  such  material  could  not  be  used  for 
that  purpose,  not  even  with  reference  to  the  least  proposition 
of  religion.^  In  particular,  modern  philosophy,  as  once  the 
ancient  Gnosis,  sought  to  divorce  the  New  Testament  from 
the  Old,^  to  oppose  Christianity  to  Judaism,  the  former  being 
universal  world-religion,  the  latter  particular  tribal  religion ; 
the  former  a  moral  religion,  the  latter  a  statutory  religion* 

iSemlee,  Vonfreier  Untersuchung  des  Kanon,  Vol.1,  pp.  1,  8,  24  ff.,  60, 75  ff.,  268; 
Vol.  II,  pp.  598  f. ;  cf.    Tindal,  Christianity  as  Old  as  Creation,  chap.  xiii. 

2"Iiidem  Fragmenten,"  Werke,  Vol.  VI,  p.  275;  and  "Axiomata,"  ibid.,  pp.  51911. 

3  Spinoza,  Tractate,  chap.  xii. 

*Ibid.,  chap,  v;  KxyiT,  Religion  innerhalb  der  Grenzen  der  reinen  Vernunft, 
chap.  iii. 


94    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

— till  Schleiermacher/  like  the  elder  Socinians,  treated  the 
Old  Testament  as  of  no  dogmatic  value. 

Such  is  the  result  to  which  dogmatic  or,  better,  religio- 
teleological  criticism  came.  Since  Schleiermacher  transition 
has  been  made  from  dogmatic  to  historical  criticism.  The 
latter  has  abated  somewhat  the  harshness  of  the  dogmatic 
judgment,  but  has  reached  a  similar  position  as  regards  the 
immediate  identification  of  canon  and  "Word  of  God,"  as 
held  by  the  religion  of  authority.  Spinoza,  who  after  all  is 
the  father  of  modern  speculation,  is  also  the  father  of  biblical 
criticism.  He  found  it  advisable  to  limit  his  investigation 
and  doubt  to  Old  Testament  books.  His  merit  lies,  not  in 
the  finality  of  his  findings — for  almost  none  of  them  was  final 
— but  in  his  method,  and  in  the  necessity  which  he  imposed 
upon  the  modern  world  of  critically  investigating  each 
book  anew.  He  pointed  out  the  marks  of  the  later  origin  of 
the  Pentateuch  and  of  the  historical  books.  He  detected 
the  contradictions,  aberrations,  gaps,  of  these  writings.  He 
considered  the  prophetic  books  as  "incomplete  and  unordered 
collections  of  older  fragments."  Subsequently  the  English 
and  French  freethinkers  took  their  cue  from  him.  His 
proof  of  the  later  origin  of  the  Old  Testament  books  became 
the  basis  of  Richard  Simon's  hypothesis  in  Germany,  that 
the  Old  Testament  historical  books  were  later  extracts  from 
Israelitish  annals  compiled  by  official  chroniclers.  From  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  investigations  by  Astruc, 
Ilgen,  Vater,  and  De  Wette  followed  concerning  the  composi- 
tion of  the  Pentateuch.  Soon  Eichhorn  and  Gesenius  urged 
the  later  origin  of  the  second  half  of  Isaiah,  and  Bertholdt  the 
nngenuineness  of  Daniel.  Thus  early  were  the  main  books 
of  the  Old  Testament  as  integral  parts  of  authority-religion 
assailed  as  such  by  historical  criticism. 

But  successors  of  Spinoza  did  not  limit  biblical  criticism 

1  Glaubenslehre,  §  131. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion         95 

to  the  Old  Testament.  The  peculiar  relation  of  the  first  three 
gospels  to  one  another  and  to  the  fourth  invited  criticism 
to  the  gospels.  In  reference  to  the  first  three,  Eichhorn's 
hypothesis  of  an  Urevangelium,  Gieseler's  of  a  common 
oral  source,  Schleiermacher's  of  several  written  sources 
— these,  with  their  permutations,  limitations,  and  combina- 
tions, shattered  faith  in  the  orthodox  conception,  partly  of  the 
genuineness,  partly  also  of  the  trustworthiness,  of  the  syn- 
optics. In  addition,  the  outer  evidence  for  their  genuineness 
was  thought  to  be  anything  but  satisfactory.  At  this  time 
Bretschneider  inexcusably  began  to  accuse  the  author  of  the 
fourth  gospel  of  intentional  falsifying.  But  he  found  little 
favor — traceable  to  the  pectoral  theology  of  a  dawning  mys- 
tical period.  Both  the  theology  and  the  Zeitgeist  were  at 
war  with  rationalism.  It  was  natural  at  such  a  time  that 
John  should  be  the  favorite  of  the  rising  generation  of  theo- 
logians, and  such  was  the  case.  At  that  time  the  criticism 
had  no  favor  which,  as  at  present,  subordinates  the  high- 
priestly  prayer  of  the  fourth  gospel  to  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  of  Matthew,  or  the  Son  of  God  of  the  fourth  to  the 
Son  of  man  of  the  synoptics.  John  at  that  time  was  even 
considered  the  only  reliable  historian.  In  a  word,  for  sub- 
jective reasons,  they  cared  little  for  the  synoptics.  But  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century  one  illusion  after 
another  began  to  vanish.  It  is  true  that  the  Romanticism 
of  the  first  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  continued  to 
dim  the  historical  eyesight,  but  it  is  also  true  that  it  tried  to 
bring  in  a  reconciliation  between  the  old  and  the  new  points 
of  view.  John  began  to  take  his  true  place;  the  synoptics 
were  more  highly  honored;  while  some  Pauline  letters  were 
doubted,  the  most  important  of  them  were  sustained,  and 
these  were  made  the  kernel  of  the  New  Testament  canon. 

But  my  task  does  not  require  me  to  write  the  history  of 
biblical  criticism,  whose  tone  and  temper  have  happily  grown 


96    The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Religion 

less  carping  and  more  sympathetic,  but  whose  hypothesis  of 
the  real  and  full  human  origin  of  the  books  of  the  Bible  — 
the  indispensable  scientific  presupposition  of  criticism  exclu- 
sive of  all  miraculous  supernaturalism  to  which  authority- 
religion  refers  the  origin  of  the  books — is  identically  the 
same  today  that  it  was  a  century  ago.  But  the  thing  for 
which  I  care  in  this  connection  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the 
development  to  the  point  reached  above,  viz.,  that  the  fides 
divina  in  the  Scriptures  of  modern  supernaturalism  has 
come  thus  to  be  founded  upon  the  fides  hiunana  in  the 
Sacred  Scriptures.  The  elder  dogmatician  could  afford  to 
be  indifferent  to  the  question  as  to  the  human  author  of  a 
biblical  book,  for  the  reason  that  he  based  his  faith  on  the 
divine  author  of  the  book  alone,  whose  "inspiration,"  neces- 
sary to  the  eyewitness  indeed,  was  yet  sufficient  for  the 
amanuensis,  however  remote  in  time  and  space  from  the  facts 
to  be  recorded.  But  the  "new  theology"  of  a  century  ago 
was  not  so  sure  that  such  a  late  compiler  of  tradition  could 
tell  the  truth.  Even  the  supernaturalist  dogmatician  of  the 
day  stood  on  the  platform  of  the  canon,  as  a  man  prepared 
to  make  a  discreet  leap,  comforting  himself  against  the 
doubts  concerning  any  single  biblical  book  with  the  thought 
that,  should  he  have  to  let  go  of  it,  others  remained  still,  and 
tapping  the  vicious  circle  in  this  comfort  with  the  precarious 
supposition  that  the  series  of  critical  assaults  will  surely  never 
be  directed  against  all  the  books. 

But  not  only  was  the  thesis  that  the  whole  Bible  is 
"Word  of  God"  contested,  but  also  that,  as  a  whole,  it  had 
the  value  of  Word  of  Grod,'  and  in  connection  with  this  latter, 

1  Roughly  and  popularly  formulated,  the  following  positions  have  been  succes- 
sively held  and,  save  the  fifth,  abandoned:  (1)  TheBible  is  in  very  fact  Word  of  God. 
(2)  The  Bible  is  words  of  certain  men  divinely  delegated  to  speak  Word  of  God,  these 
men  being  Moses,  Paul,  John,  et  id  oiiine  genus.  (3)  These  men  are  not — certainly 
not  demonstrably — authors  of  all  the  books  valued  as  Word  of  God.  Besides,  there 
is  that  in  their  writings  of  such  a  character,  morally  aod  religiously,  as  to  be  out  of 
harmony  with  the  Christian  idea  of  God.     (4)  At  all  events,  as  an  a  priori  proposition. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion         97 

its  perspicuitas  and  sufficientia.  Reference  must  now  be 
made  to  the  critical  thought — quite  as  much  religio-teleo- 
logical  as  empirico-historical — on  this  last  point. 

According  to  Tindal/  in  Aristotle's  Ethics,  in  Cicero's 
book  on  duties,  in  Grotius's  moral  writings,  the  doctrine  of 
human  duties  is  set  forth  definitely  and  in  detail,  also  in 
proper  system  and  order;  but  in  the  Sacred  Scriptures  the 
same  subject  is  treated  indefinitely,  often  figuratively  and 
hyperbolically,  so  that  if  we  were  to  interpret  the  Scriptures 
purely  by  themselves,  they  would  lead  us  into  dangerous 
errors.  It  is  the  limitation  of  this  influence  from  truths 
stated  elsewhere  that  saves  us  from  a  mediseval  type  of  life 
today.  But  all  this  is  reason  why  the  canon  can  yield  no 
sure  and  adequate  authority  in  matters  of  practice  today. 
Not  seldom  one  passage  not  only  limits  another,  but  contra- 
dicts it.  Moreover,  there  is  no  sect,  no  religious  opinion  in 
Christianity,  however  absurd  it  may  be,  but  can  heap  Scrip- 
ture upon  Scripture  for  its  support.  But  taking  even  those 
passages  which  may  supposedly  have  been  clear  enough  for 
the  original  reader,  we  find  many  such  hard,  if  not  impossible, 
for  us  to  understand,  owing  to  diversity  of  experience,  psy- 
chological and  social.  Think  how  much  historical  anti- 
quarianism,  how  much  Greek  and  Hebrew  language,  we  need 
in  order  to  understand  prophets  and  apostles,  and  without 
which  no  one  can  be  convinced  independently  and  fundamen- 
tally that  the  Scriptures  really  teach  this  rather  than  that. 
And  thus  the  people,  in  a  matter  on  which  their  eternal  salva- 
tion is  said  to  depend,  are  left  without  an  autonomous  judg- 
ment of  their  own.  Unfortunately,  the  key  which  Scripture 
itself  affords  is  itself  a  dubious  one,  logic,  philology,  grammar, 

we  may  declare  that  what  Jesus  said  is  fit  to  be  valued  as  Word  of  God — and  the 
evangelists  have  accurately  given  us  what  he  said.  (5)  The  authors  of  the  gospels 
are  not  certainly  known  to  be  eyewitnesses,  wrote  for  dogmatico-practical  ends  and 
not  historico-critically,  so  that  no  scholar  today  is  willing  to  make  affidavit  as  to 
what  precisely  Jesus  did  or  did  not  say,  save  possibly  in  a  few  instances. 
1  Christianity  as  Old  as  Creation,  chap.  xiii. 


98     The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

rhetoric,  etc.,  being  needed  to  interpret  the  Bible.  Thus  a 
papacy  —  and  a  worse  one  than  the  Catholic,  because  depend- 
ent on  many  men  who  are  divided  among  themselves — 
returns  in  the  Protestant  churches. 

In  consideration  of  these  inescapable  problems,  men 
looked  about  for  some  firmer  ground  to  stand  on.  Lessing 
now  added  to  his  other  proposition,  that  the  Bible  is  not 
religion,  the  proposition  that  the  letter  is  not  the  spirit.  He 
did  not  deny  that  the  spirit  was  contained  in  certain  parts 
of  the  Bible,  but  denied  that  it  was  bound  thereto.  He 
truly  urged  that  this  same  spirit,  the  Christian  religion,  was 
before  the  Bible,  before  evangelists  and  apostles  wrote. 
Considerable  time  elapsed  before  the  first  of  them  wrote, 
and  before  the  canon  was  formed.  However  much  may 
depend  on  these  writings,  therefore,  the  whole  truth  of  reli- 
gion cannot  possibly  depend  upon  them.  If  the  religion 
triumphs  for  so  long  a  space  of  time  without  the  canon,  it 
must  be  possible  for  the  canon  to  be  lost  even,  and  the  reli- 
gion which  it  teaches  to  survive  without  it.  Luther,  he 
cried,  freed  us  from  the  yoke  of  tradition;  who  shall  free  us 
from  the  intolerable  yoke  of  the  letter  ? 

The  mystical  utterances  of  the  Quakers — Barclay'  in 
particular — were  to  the  same  effect.  The  Sacred  Scriptures 
were  not  an  external  communication,  but  issued  from  an 
inner  revelation  in  the  hearts  and  consciences  of  great  men 
of  history.  But  just  on  that  account  the  Scriptures  are  not 
the  source  of  that  revelation,  but  only  something  derivative 
from  that  source.  And  since  what  is  to  be  principle  and 
rule  must  be  something  supreme  and  original,  they  cannot 
be  the  ultimate  source  of  knowledge  and  criterion  of  Chris- 
tian faith  and  life,  but  this  honor  can  be  accorded  only  to 
that  inner  revelation  of  the  Spirit  from  which  the  books 
issued,  and  which  abides  with  all  who  are  spiritual.     The 

1  Barclay,  Apol.  Thes.,  III. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion         99 

same  thought  is  expressed  by  Spinoza  aa  he  treats  of  the 
relation  between  "the  written  and  the  unwritten  word." 
The  former  is  fragmentary,  abbreviated,  unequal,  and  full  of 
gaps;  the  latter  is  not.  He  urges,  however,  that  what  is 
thus  true  of  the  canon  is  not  on  that  account  true  of  the 
Word  of  God,  which  is  universal  and  which  "cannot  be 
erroneously  copied."  "The  true  Word  of  God  is  not  written 
with  ink ;  it  is  the  handwriting  of  God  in  human  hearts  and 
human  history."  It  does  not  follow  that  if  ever  we  should 
be  without  the  Bible,  we  should  therefore  be  without  the  Word 
of  God.  The  rabbis  and  church  fathers  who  determined 
the  canon  rejected  some  books  and  retained  others,  and  hence 
must  have  tested  the  documents  by  the  idea,  Word  of  God; 
but  this  implies  that  they  antecedently  knew  what  Word  of 
God  was,  and  therefore  knew  this  independently  of  the 
Scriptures  which  they  were  canonizing.' 

In  earlier  times  God  communed  with  man,  a  pilgrim  with 
him  along  the  path  of  life.  Does  he  now,  on  account  of 
the  existence  of  the  Bible,  draw  back  from  man  ?  Are  all 
worse  off  than  Abraham  ?  Has  he  now  shut  up  his  people 
to  books  written  in  a  foreign  tongue,  and  interpreted  by  con- 
tradictory interpreters  ?  No.  His  Word  cannot  have  been 
spoken  at  a  single  time  to  a  single  people,  to  be  existent  now 
only  in  writings  intelligible  to  most  nations  only  in  transla- 
tions, but  it  must  be  an  eternally  speaking  Word,  now  as  ever, 
and  intelligible  without  distinction  of  tongues  or  peoples. 
It  is  the  Word  of  God  spoken  to  everybody,  in  history,  con- 
science, and  nature.  Such  was  the  contention  of  rationalism 
and  mysticism  against  the  employment  of  tradition  as  exter- 
nal authority,  which  is  the  main  characteristic,  the  very 
basis,  of  authority-religion.  And  it  is  in  consequence  of 
these  reflections,  urged  a  century  ago,  that,  not  the  Sacred 
Scriptures,  but  the  orthodox  conception  of  the  structure  and 

1  Tractate,  chap.  xiii. 


100   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

function  of  Sacred  Scripture,  has  been  given  up  by  the  most 
significant  theologians  of  the  modern  period.  Sacred  history 
has  been  sucked  into  the  stream  of  history,  and  hence  has 
become  something  relative  and  conditioned,  and  the  kind  of 
dogmatic  finality  and  absoluteness  predicted  of  it  by  the 
religion  of  authority  has  suffered  irrevocable  dissolution. 
The  pseudo-history  of  miracle  yields  to  the  real  history  of 
criticism. 

As  modern  investigation  discredits  the  orthodox  theory 
of  the  origin  of  the  separate  biblical  books  in  the  immediacy 
of  miraculous  supernaturalism,  so  has  a  study  of  the  origin 
and  adoption  of  the  canon  led  to  a  similar  conclusion  in  this 
field.  As  this  study  has  rendered  distinct  service  to  the 
movement  which  has  overthrown  authority-religion,  a  brief 
statement  of  the  conclusions  of  recent  scholarship  may  be 
embodied  in  this  section.  But  it  will  be  sufficient  to  limit 
the  statement  to  the  New  Testament  canon. 

To  be  sure,  the  student  of  the  origin  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment will  admit  that  he  is  still  on  uncertain  ground — as  is 
the  case,  for  that  matter,  with  the  origin  of  any  institution. 
In  all  such  cases  history  is  veiled  in  an  obscurity  which 
only  painstaking  and  penetrating  work  can  partially  illumine. 
Still  some  things  have  become  reasonably  certain  in  this 
field  of  inquiry.  First  of  all,  it  is  admitted  that  the  question 
as  to  the  origin  of  the  New  Testament  is  a  purely  historical 
question.  It  must  be  separated  from  all  that  the  New  Testa- 
ment signifies  as  the  classic  document  of  our  religion.  The 
investigator  holds  himself  aloof  from  all  that  one  might  call 
the  standpoint  of  an  ecclesiastical  or  religious  party. ^  For 
another  thing,  the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  no  longer  confounded  with  the  question  as  to  the 

1  One  party  tries  to  create  or  preserve  a  prop  for  faith  by  making  our  collection 
of  Scriptures  to  be  as  old  as  possible.  Conversely,  another  party  seeks  to  undermine 
what  in  its  opinion  is  a  falsely  understood  interest  of  faith,  by  proving  that  the 
canon  is  of  far  more  recent  origin.    Both  are  in  so  far  unscientific. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       101 

origin  of  the  single  books  of  the  New  Testament.  It  is  true 
that  these  questions  cannot  be  entirely  separated,  inasmuch 
as  the  single  books  must  exist  before  they  can  be  collected. 

But  the  books  might  have  existed  a  long  time  before  they 
were  united  into  a  whole.  The  proof  of  the  first-century  origin 
of  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament  is  no  proof  of  the  first- 
century  origin  of  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament.  When, 
and  under  what  conditions,  did  the  collection  of  writings 
which  we  call  the  New  Testament  originate  within  the  Chris- 
tian religion  and  church  ?  In  distinction  from  all  tendential 
considerations,  this  is  the  real  question. 

The  New  Testament  presupposes  an  Old  Testament.  This 
Old  Testament  not  only  became  and  remained  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  of  the  Judaism  by  which  it  was  made,  but  also  of 
the  Christianity  which  adopted  it.  The  new  religion  was 
authenticated  by  quotations  from  the  old  canon.'  Those 
who  made  the  quotations  felt  themselves  to  be  Jews.  They 
recognized  no  breach  with  the  past  in  what  Jesus  brought 
to  them.  The  Old  Testament  was  the  apostles'  Sacred  Scrip- 
tures, as  it  was  that  of  their  fellow-countrymen.  Only  the 
apostles  drew  difiFerent  conclusions  therefrom,  read  it  with 
different  eyes,  with  faith  in  their  Messiah  who  had  been 
crucified  by  unbelievers. 

Thus  the  Old  Testament  remained  when  the  gospel  passed 
over  to  the  gentiles,  and  when,  too,  the  conditions  of  under- 
standing it  became  entirely  different.  Gentile  Christians 
accepted  it  as  their  sacred  book,  and,  as  we  have  seen  in  a 
former  connection,  by  means  of  the  method  of  interpretation 
which  Jewish  Christians  had  employed  in  their  own  way, 
the  gentile  Christians  were  able  to  make  the  Old  Testament 
permanently  their  own.^  The  Old  Testament  was  Christian- 
ized.    Much  as  there  have  been  efforts  to  show  that  the  Old 

1  The  first  chapters  of  the  Acts,  e.  g.,  illustrate  this. 

2  What  a  sorry  thing  to  the  man  of  science  the  allegorical  method  of  interpreta- 
tion is  1    Yet  it  saved  the  Old  Testament  to  the  church  of  all  the  coming  ages. 


102   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Testament  has  been  wrongly  accepted  as  Sacred  Scripture 
of  Christianity,  for  the  first  period  of  Christianity  such  a 
thought  would  have  been  entirely  unthinkable.  God  had 
spoken  through  his  prophets ;  last  of  all,  through  the  greatest 
of  them,  his  Son;  it  was  natural  that  all  the  past  should  be 
set  into  relation  with  him,  should  find  its  fulfilment  in  him. 
But  it  was  just  on  this  account  that  another  authority  for 
faith  was  set  up  by  the  side  of  and  above  the  Old  Testament: 
the  Lord,  6  Kupto?,  as  he  is  called  in  the  Scriptures.  Jesus 
left  no  literary  remains.  And  what  he  said  was  not  imme- 
diately chronicled,  as  was  later  the  case  with  Mohammed, 
whose  "revelations"  were  collected  as  Koran  by  his  disciples, 
almost  immediately  after  his  death.  But,  naturally,  Jesus* 
disciples  cherished  his  words  in  their  hearts,  and  had  them 
on  their  lips  as  they  bore  enthusiastic  witness  to  their  Master. 
What  their  Sacred  Scripture  foretold  was  fulfilled  in  him ; 
and  his  words  were  the  words  of  the  Holy  Spirit  himself. 
Through  him  God  spake  to  man.  The  disciples  who  had 
seen  him,  and  on  whose  hearts  his  words  had  indelibly 
stamped  themselves,  did  not  at  first  feel  the  need  of  writing 
these  words  down.  Even  Paul,  to  whom  what  the  Lord  said, 
and  what  he  had  "  received  from  the  Lord, "  was  the  supreme 
authority,  hardly  possessed  written  narratives  concerning 
the  Master — at  all  events  nothing  betrays  a  literary  source 
for  what  he  sets  forth  as  "commanded  by  the  Lord." 

Meanwhile  the  eyewitnesses  of  the  great  events,  the  origi- 
nal bearers  of  the  tradition,  vanished  from  the  stage.  The 
desire  was  aroused  in  the  Christian  community  to  rescue  the 
memorabilia  of  the  words  and  deeds,  the  life  and  death  and 
resurrection,  of  the  Lord  from  the  uncertainty  of  oral  tradi- 
tion. To  this  desire,  and  the  desire  to  present  the  glad  tid- 
ings of  Christ  as  the  center  of  the  New  Faith,  the  gospels 
owe  their  origin.  The  veil  which  conceals  the  beginnings 
of  this  species  of  literature  will  probably  never  be  entirely 


Dissolution  op  Authority-Keligion        103 

lifted ;  at  all  events,  not  with  the  material  so  far  at  our  dis- 
posal. With  some  probability  it  may  only  be  said  that,  in 
the  primitive  community  and  before  the  destruction  of  Jeru- 
salem, there  was  a  gospel  writing,  written  in  the  language 
of  the  land — i.  e.,  Aramaic — and  that  tradition  calls  its 
author  the  apostle  Matthew,  This  writing — with  which  our 
Matthew  gospel  is  not  identical — contained  sayings  of  Jesus, 
not  excluding  necessarily  on  that  account  something  of 
historical  framework. 

This  literary  growth  was  continued  in  the  next  generation. 
The  author  of  the  preface  of  the  third  gospel  writes  that 
many  had  already  sought  to  tell  of  the  great  things  that  had 
taken  place  according  to  the  reports  of  the  eyewitnesses  and 
servants  of  the  Word.  Of  these  preparatory  works  nothing 
remains  to  us,  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the  Mark  and 
Matthew  gospels,  which  may  have  lain  before  Luke  quite  as 
they  are  now.  To  be  sure,  in  the  course  of  the  second  cen- 
tury, aside  from  our  New  Testament  gospels,  still  other  gos- 
pels were  composed,  containing  much  that  was  apocryphal,, 
much  that  was  foreign  to  the  genuine  tradition. 

But  were  our  New  Testament  gospels  valid  from  the  very 
beginning  as  sacred  writings,  in  the  sense  that  the  Old 
Testament  was  adjudged  to  be  sacred?  Certainly  not. 
There  is  no  trace  that  this  was  so  in  the  first  generation  after 
the  appearance  of  the  gospels.  That  the  writers  themselves 
were  not  conscious  of  producing  a  sacred  literature — of  being 
"inspired,"  as  later  dogmatics  declared — is  best  attested  by 
the  simple,  frank  prefatory  words  of  the  third  gospel: 
"Forasmuch  as  many  have  taken  in  hand  to  draw  up  a  nar- 
rative concerning  those  matters  which  have  been  fulfilled 
among  us  ....  it  seemed  good  to  me  also  after  a  thorough 
investigation  of  the  sources  to  write."  He  writes  as  histor- 
ian, but  with  the  purpose  of  making  a  propaganda  by  his 
exposition.     In  the  communities  his  book  and  others,  espe- 


104    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

cially  the  gospels  of  Matthew  and  Mark,  were  highly  esteemed 
as  authentic  documents  to  be  read  in  and  out  of  public  wor- 
ship. Their  authority  as  yet  consisted  in  the  presumption 
that  they  authentically  gave  to  the  community  what  was 
known  of  the  teaching  and  life  of  Jesus.  It  was  the  words 
of  Jesus  that  passed  as  sacred,  as  inviolable  criterion  of  faith ; 
they,  these  words,  are  canon,  and  pass  as  sacred,  not  because 
they  are  in  the  gospels,  but  because  they  came  from  the  lips  of 
Jesus.  In  the  Christian  authorship  of  the  following  genera- 
tions one  detects  none  too  much  of  this.  The  number  of 
cases  in  which  the  word  of  Jesus  is  adduced  as  proof  is  van- 
ishingly  small.  At  the  end  of  the  first  century  none  of  our 
gospels  passed  as  authority,  as  Sacred  Scripture,  in  the  same 
sense  that  the  Old  Testament  did. 

Meanwhile  thino^s  could  not  continue  lonfj  in  this  state  of 
suspense  and  indecision.  Could  the  words  of  Jesus  be  last- 
ingly separated  from  the  frame  in  which  they  were  set? 
The  inference  that  the  evangelical  document,  because  it  deliv- 
ered what  was  holy,  was  itself  holy,  was  too  much  a  matter 
of  course  psychologically  for  the  process  of  sanctification  and 
canonization  not  to  go  on  with  comparative  rapidity. 
Besides,  in  the  consciousness  of  the  believing  community  the 
apostles  came  to  share  more  and  more  in  the  halo  that  glo- 
rified the  brow  of  the  Founder.  The  Lord  and  the  apostles 
— these  came  to  be  inseparable  watchwords.  And  these 
apostles,  "holy"  men  therefore,  had  composed  the  gospels, 
directly  or  indirectly.  If  now  other  productions  came  into 
circulation,  likewise  purporting  to  be  genuine  traditions, 
and  were  decorated  with  apostolic  names  for  purposes  of 
authentication,  while  in  fact  they  were  of  an  apocryphal 
character,  the  occasion  to  witlidraiv  to  an  acknowledged 
tradition  was  all  the  greater.  The  canonizing  process 
advanced  unconsciously.  When  about  the  middle  of  the  sec- 
ond century  Justin  says  that  a  Scripture  lesson  was  uniformly 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       105 

read  in  Christian  worship,  from  the  gospels,  or  from  the 
prophets,  we  infer  that  the  apostolic  writings  were  already 
co-ordinated,  or  almost  co-ordinated,  with  the  prophetic,  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  community  where  this  took  place. 
And  we  may  scarcely  doubt  that  about  this  time  our  gospels 
were  already  valid  as  Sacred  Scripture  to  the  churches. 
But,  still,  to  the  consciousness  of  that  day  there  was  yet  a 
distinction  between  our  canonical  gospels,  inasmuch  as  the 
gospel  of  John  was  differently  valued  from  the  other  three 
gospels.  There  is  no  evidence  that  at  the  middle  of  the 
second  century  the  fourth  gospel  had  been  employed  any- 
where for  purposes  of  public  worship.  Gradually,  however, 
this  distinction  faded  away.  How,  we  do  not  know.  Formal 
deliberation  can  hardly  have  taken  place  at  this  stage  of  the 
development. 

But  the  main  point  is  that  as  yet  there  was  no  fixed 
collection,  no  New  Testament  of  the  evangelists.  What  I 
have  said  of  the  gospels  may  not  be  summarily  applied  to  the 
rest  of  the  New  Testament.  To  be  sure,  the  Revelation  of 
John,  as  the  writing  of  a  prophet,  was  very  soon  co-ordinated 
with  the  prophetic  writings  of  the  Old  Testament,  while, 
conversely,  just  on  account  of  its  content,  it  had  to  make 
headway  in  many  regions  against  a  long  opposition.  As  to 
the  epistles  of  John,  the  indication  is  that  they  were  by  no 
means  accorded  such  honor  even  at  a  time  when  the  churches 
began  to  co-ordinate  his  gospel  with  the  Old  Testament 
writings. 

Naturally,  such  epistles  were  preserved  in  the  churches, 
occasionally  being  passed  around,  and  words  which  a  Paul 
said  or  sent  to  the  faithful  would  remain  of  value.  But  there 
does  not  seem  to  be  any  passage  of  literature  in  the  sub- 
apostolic  generation  that  warrants  the  conclusion  that  an 
apostolic  letter  was  appealed  to  as  a  sacred  writing.  Indeed, 
we  cannot  adduce  the  proof  that,  say,  the  epistle  of  Jude, 


106    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

the  second  and  third  epistles  of  John,  the  epistle  of  James, 
some  of  the  Pauline  letters,  existed  in  the  first  decades  of  the 
second  century.  True,  it  would  be  rash  to  infer  from  this 
that  they  did  not  exist,  though  one  may  affirm  that  they 
were  not  valued  as  parts  of  a  sacred  literature. 

Thus,  if  one  takes  his  stand  at  about  the  year  150 — that 
is,  a  century  after  the  missionary  activity  of  Paul — ^what  is 
the  situation?  Christianity  knew  at  this  time  a  Sacred 
Scripture,  the  Old  Testament,  and,  along  with  this,  it 
honored,  as  highest  authorities  of  its  faith,  the  Lord  and  his 
apostles,  and,  in  consequence,  those  writings  which  bore 
witness  of  him  and  of  them.  But  they  had  not  yet  con- 
sciously erected  these  non-Old  Testament  writings  to  the 
dignity  of  Sacred  Scripture.  There  were  churches  enough 
to  which,  for  example,  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  the  epistle  to 
the  Thessalonians,  to  say  nothing  of  those  to  Titus  and 
Timothy,  and  others,  were  still  unknown.  And,  conversely, 
writings  which  we  no  longer  find  in  our  New  Testament  were 
held  in  high  repute  in  many  communities,  and  enjoyed  the 
same  consideration  as  apostolic  writings :  the  so-called  Epistle 
of  Barnabas,  the  so-called  Revelation  of  Peter,  the  Shepherd 
of  Hermas,  and  the  like  literature,  were  read  by  many,  and 
remained  valid  for  a  long  time  when  matters  in  general  had 
already  changed. 

Such,  then,  was  the  situation  about  150.  A  generation  later, 
and  the  picture  was  changed!  With  apparent  suddenness,  a 
new  collection  of  sacred  writings  springs  up  from  about  the 
year  175  on — first  in  Asia  Minor;  almost  simultaneously 
in  Gaul,  Rome,  and  North  Africa ;  a  little  later  in  Alexandria. 
About  180  IrenaBus,  in  his  writings,  seems  to  equate  entirely 
Pauline,  Petrine,  and  Johannine  epistles  with  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  the  gospels!  Tertullian  {ca.  220)  puts  the  evan- 
gelical and  apostolic  writings  on  an  equality  with  law  and 
prophets — it  is  with  him  we   meet  for  the  first  time  the 


Dissolution  op  Authority-Eeligion       107 

expression  Novum  Testamentum  in  opposition  to,  and  in 
supplement  of,  Veins  Testamentum.  The  case  is  similar 
with  Origen  (254). 

Now,  how  did  this  great  change  come  about  ?  There  can 
be  no  doubt  as  to  the  answer:  The  rise  of  the  Catholic 
church  intervened ;  and  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament  is 
the  ivork  of  the  Catholic  church!  ^ 

The  problem  of  the  origin  of  the  Catholic  church  likewise 
belongs  to  those  questions  which  lie  in  obscurity.  But  there 
are  a  few  acknowledged  facts,  and  these  are  at  once  sufficient 
and  indispensable  for  my  purpose.  From  the  very  beginning 
the  Christian  communities'  formed  a  brotherhood  whose  com- 
mon characteristic  was  the  same  worship,  the  same  discipline, 
the  same  hope.  An  ideal  bond  held  them  together.  But  at 
the  time  of  which  we  have  been  thinking  they  were  not  yet 
combined  into  a  church.  Rather,  the  idea  of  a  catholic  church 
arose  gradually.  The  concept  ecclesia  catholica  has  for  its 
counterpart  the  concept  of  sect,  hairesis;  and,  in  fact,  the 
Catholic  church  was  formed — or,  at  all  events,  consolidated 
— in  opposition  to  heresy.  This  opposition,  however,  was 
provoked  by  that  world-historical  movement  in  religion  and 
the  philosophy  of  religion  which,  in  the  second  century,  held 
in  its  mighty  grasp  the  Roman  Empire  from  its  oriental  limits 
to  its  center  in  Athens — that  great  movement  which  bears 
the  name  of  Gnosticism.  This  movement,  so  far  as  it  came 
into  contact  with  the  Christian  religion,  aimed  at  nothing 
less  than  the  sucking  of  historical  Christianity  into  the 
great  stream  of  universal  religions  and  philosophical  tendencies 
and  ideas,  with  which  speculative  minds  busied  themselves. 
Had  the  aim  succeeded,  Christianity,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
would  have  forfeited  its  unique  character,  lost  its  historical 
basis,  and,  sucked  into  the  universal  vortex,  gone  down  like 
the  other  religions  of  a  foundering  heathenism. 

Decade  after  decade  this  danger  was  very  great.     It  was 


108    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

against  it  most  of  all,  and  against  certain  "enthusiastic" 
movements,  that  the  Christian  brotherhoods  combined.  They 
— that  is,  their  controlling  spirits — deliberated  on  what  was 
common  to  the  brotherhoods,  and  —  here  now  is  the  really 
decisive  matter — consciouslij  and  deliberately  applied  the 
criteria  which  they  had  hitherto  unconsciously  employed. 
Their  theologians  searched  for  the  characteristics  whereby 
a  "Christian"  could  be  distinguished  from  a  "heretic." 
They  found  that  there  were  such  marks.  A  Christian  was 
one  who  (a)  confessed  faith  in  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit, 
according  to  the  rule  of  faith,  regula  fidei,  handed  down  by 
the  apostles;  (6)  acknowledged  the  Scriptures  originated  or 
handed  down  by  the  apostles,  and  read  those  Scriptures  in 
the  light  of  the  rule  of  faith;  (c)  held  to  bishops  ordained 
by  the  apostles,  or  inducted  into  office  by  the  apostles — 
bishops  and  their  congregations ;  in  short,  held  to  the  Catho- 
lic church.  The  very  instant  these  three  criteria  were  con- 
sciously employed,  the  Catholic  church  was,  in  principle, 
completed;  the  essential  thing  was  not  the  slow  elaboration 
of  its  organization  in  detail.  This  church  consciously  founds 
itself  upon  the  apostles  and  the  apostolic,  and  it  is  a  matter 
of  entire  indifference  whether  her  claims  are  singly  in  accord 
with  historical  fact  or  not. 

The  application  of  all  this  to  the  theme  in  hand,  the 
origin  of  the  New  Testament,  may  be  made  without  difficulty. 
The  very  instant  one  consciously  points  to  a  number  of 
sacred  writings  as  source  of  faith,  along  side  of  the  writings  of 
the  Old  Testament,  one  has  a  New  Testament :  prophets  and 
apostles.  To  the  consciousness  of  this  church  the  apostles 
are  no  longer  historical  figures.  Moreover,  the  con- 
sciousness was  evanished  that  any  of  the  apostolic  writings 
owed  their  existence  to  accidental  circumstances.  The 
churches,  e.  g.,  could  not  let  the  Pauline  letters  go,  for  the 
reason  that  Marcion,  among  her  opponents,  had  drawn  pre- 


Dissolution  op  Authority-Religion       109 

cisely  on  them  as  support  for  his  teaching/  The  church 
was  in  trouble,  and  such  considerations,  if  they  did  not  tip 
the  scale,  surely  had  great  weight.  At  all  events,  matters 
.developed  more  simply,  more  naturally,  at  this  stage  than 
many  seem  able  or  willing  to  suppose. 

If,  now,  it  be  correct  that  about  the  date  above  indicated 
the  new  collection  of  Scripture  was  in  principle  complete,  it 
yet  by  no  means  follows  that  there  was  general  agreement  as 
to  the  scope  of  the  New  Testament,  or  that  the  boundary  was 
already  definitely  drawn  which  separated  this  New  Testament 
from  other  honored  primitive  Christian  writings.  At  the 
year  150  we  may  not  speak  of  a  New  Testament,  although  we 
may  not  be  blind  to  the  fact  that  there  could  have  been 
sacred  Christian  writings.  But  at  our  later  date,  even  though 
we  bear  in  mind  that  there  was  no  sort  of  agreement  as  to  the 
number  of  writings  which  belong  to  these  Sacred  Scriptures, 
the  evidence  is  indisputable  that  there  were  such  writings. 

Concerning  the  scojje  of  the  New  Testament  the  contro- 
versy waged  long.  Matters  were  not  in  such  shape  that  an 
ecumenical  council  could  be  convened  after  the  fashion  of  a 
later  time,  in  which  it  could  be  decreed  that  from  this  day 
henceforth  such  and  such  writings  belong  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Of  course,  some  fixations  as  to  valid  documents  must 
have  been  hit  upon  in  single  provinces,  in  Rome  or  Africa, 
Asia  Minor  or  Egypt;  and  that  critic  was  doubtless  right 
who  stated  that,  unless  one  is  of  the  opinion  that  the  canon — 
i.  e.,  the  New  Testament — arose  in  the  moon,  one  must 
assume  such  partial  agreements.  And  the  comparative 
harmony  which  prevailed  very  soon  in  single  ecclesiastical 
regions  speaks  clearly  for  this. 

That  our  gospels,  and  only  they,  belonged  in  the  New  Testa- 

iWho  knows  whether  this  Catholic  church,  under  different  circumstances, 
would  not  have  left  Paul  out,  precisely  Paul,  the  apostle  of  independence,  with  his 
epistles  breathing  religious  freedom  — the  apostle  who  stood  for  the  principle  of 
personality  over  against  the  principle  of  authority  I 


110   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

ment  was  common  assumption.  But  this  does  not  set  aside 
the  fact  that  in  Syria,  not  our  four  gospels,  but  Tatian's 
Diatessaron,  remained  in  use  for  centuries.  Further,  along 
with  the  Revelation  of  John,  the  apocryphal  revelation 
of  Peter  bade  for  reception  into  the  New  Testament,  e.  g., 
in  Egypt;  and,  conversely,  many  people  would  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  Johannine  Revelation,  in  the  Orient  and  also 
in  Spain,  even  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries.  As  to  the 
so-called  catholic  epistles,  there  was  agreement  at  first  only 
as  to  First  Peter  and  First  John.  That  Second  John  and 
the  epistle  of  Jude  were  to  be  accepted  seems  to  have  been 
the  universal  opinion,  at  least  in  the  West.  On  the  other 
hand,  profound  silence  reigns  concerning  James  and  the 
second  epistle  of  Peter — nor  is  mention  made  of  Third  John. 

While  so  many  of  our  present  New  Testament  writings 
were  contested,  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  was  read  in  many 
regions ;  the  two  letters  to  Clement  of  Rome,  the  Teaching  of 
the  Twelve  Apostles,  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas,  were  copied 
together  with  the  New  Testament,  and  were  manifestly 
treated  therefore  as  sacred  writings. 

Thus  it  was  only  gradually  that  this  canonical  develop- 
ment came  to  an  end.  In  the  Oriental  Greek  church  it  is 
truer  to  say  it  was  dormant  rather  than  that  it  came  to  an 
end  at  all;  while  in  the  church  of  the  West  it  was  the  all- 
prevailing  influence  of  Augustine,  who,  about  the  year  400, 
in  dependence  on  the  church  at  Rome,  was  able  to  fix  the 
present  number  according  to  which  officially  twenty-seven 
writings  belong  to  the  New  Testament,  as  today.  "Officially," 
since  the  written  law  was  by  no  means  able  at  a  single 
stroke  to  abrogate  the  right  of  contrary  custom.  In  Spanish 
synods,  even  about  the  year  600,  opposition  was  maintained 
against  the  Revelation  of  John;  and  in  the  sub-Augustinian 
period  the  epistle  to  the  Hebrews  was  left  out  of  many  a 
Bible,  or  was  replaced  by  a  supposed  epistle  of  the  apostles 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Eeligion       111 

to  the  Laodiceans,  or  the  two  figured  side  by  side.  And  if 
Luther  was  of  the  opinion  that  the  epistle  of  James  was  a 
"strawy"  epistle,  if  he  boldly  said  that  his  spirit  could  not 
make  itself  at  home  in  the  Revelation  of  John,  he  but  uttered 
his  forceful  subjectivism  in  such  judgments — a  subjectivism 
to  which  the  apparent  work-righteousness  of  James  appeared 
inferior  by  the  side  of  the  faith-righteousness  of  the  Great 
Apostle.  With  such  judgments  Luther  religiously  rather 
than  critically  protested  against  the  dogma,  and  in  con- 
sequence canon,  of  the  New  Testament.  He  protested  against 
the  idea  that  a  thing  was  sacred,  and  inviolably  valid,  simply 
because  it  was  expressed  or  taught  in  this  or  that  book  of  the 
New  Testament,  He  said  sharply  that  he  rejected  the 
Revelation  because  he  could  not  detect  that  it  was  produced 
by  the  Holy  Spirit.  He  supplemented  such  autocratic  utter- 
ances with  the  positive  declaration  that  he  intended  to  abide 
by  the  books  which  clearly  and  purely  reflected  Christ  to 
him. 

To  sum  up:  First,  in  the  sub-apostolic  period  the  Christian 
communities  possessed  only  one  class  of  canonical  writings, 
the  Old  Testament — only  these  were  regularly  read  in  public 
worship.  Secondly,  as  equal  authority  with  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  sayings  of  Jesus  came  to  be  honored.  They,  too, 
were  read  or  recited  at  public  worship.  At  the  close  of  the 
sub-apostolic  age  there  were  two  sacred  authorities:  the 
prophets  and  the  Lord,  Thirdly,  the  letters  and  other  didac- 
tic writings  which  the  apostolic  age  originated  were  compara- 
tively little  known,  were  no  common  ecclesiastical  possession, 
but  were  the  property  of  single  churches  to  which  they  were 
addressed,  or  which  had  somehow  come  into  possession 
of  them.  As  yet  they  were  not  valid  as  saci^ed  writings, 
perhaps  were  not  regularly  read  in  worship.  Fourthly,  how- 
ever, it  was  through  the  familiarity  and  endearment  which 
apostolic  writings  later  gained  by  being  read  at  public  wor- 


112   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

ship  that  the  process  of  sanctification  went  on,  preliminary 
to  their  canonization.  On  the  other  hand,  canonization 
marks  the  decay  of  immediacy  in  religion,  the  decay  of  the 
demonstration  of  the  Spirit  and  power,  the  passing  away  of 
that  inner  certitude  due  to  the  Spirit  and  power,  and  the 
replacement  of  productivity  by  reproductivity  and  sterility. 
Fifthly,  comprehensively  stated,  the  formation  of  the  canon 
was  necessitated  by  the  warfare  on  the  part  of  the  Catholic 
church  against  heresy  and  Gnosticism,  and  the  fixation  of 
the  canon  was  the  work  of  later  centuries. 

The  conclusion  which  this  reference  to  history  yields,  as 
afPecting  the  subject  under  consideration,  is  inescapable. 
The  canon  of  the  New  Testament  is  a  work  of  the  Catholic 
church.  Appeal  to  the  New  Testament  as  eo  ipso  an  author- 
ity binding  upon  faith  is  a  dogma  of  the  Catholic  church. 
The  Catholics  have  ever  reminded  the  Protestants  that  the 
Bible  derived  its  canonical  authority,  and  its  delimitation 
over  against  the  uncanonical,  from  that  very  church  which 
Protestants  have  otherwise  repudiated.  And  Protestantism 
is  still  debtor  to  Catholicism  at  this  point.  It  is  the  Achilles' 
heel  of  Protestantism. 
>  In  leaving  this  survey,  it  may  be  well  to  signalize  the  net 
I  results:  (a)  In  authority-religion  the  Bible  is  an  effect  to 
'  be  referred  to  miraculous  divine  causalities.  The  eighteenth- 
century  criticism  of  deist,  rationalist,  and  mystic,  and  the 
historico-critical  movement  of  the  nineteenth  century,  are 
decisive  against  this  foundation  of  the  value  of  the  Bible. 
The  Bible  was  not  "automatically  composed,"  is  due  rather 
to  the  "free  caprice  of  the  writers,"  and  exhibits  scientific 
and  historic  errors,  expresses  local  and  personal  passions  — 
in  a  word,  has  all  the  marks  of  a  deliberate  human  composi- 
tion. (6)  From  a  history  of  the  origin  and  fixation  of  the 
canon,  it  is  clear  that  the  a  priori  declaration  of  the  coin- 
cidence  of  canonicalness  and  immediate  divineness  has  no 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       113 

historical  support.  From  both  points  of  view,  the  way  the 
Bible  came  about,  its  constitution,  origin,  and  history,  wit- 
ness against  its  immediate  miraculous  derivation  as  set  forth 
by  authority-religion.  Today  we  must  get  at  the  importance, 
meaning,  and  significance  of  the  Bible  in  some  other  way. 
Its  revelation-value  must  be  based  on  its  record  of  the  inner 
experiences  of  great-souled  persons  wrestling  with  the  crises 
of  their  fate. 

3.  The  dissolution  of  the  Protestant  apologetic  which 
appealed  to  prophecy  defined  as  prediction,  in  order  to  prove 
the  immediate  supernatural  derivation  of  the  Bible,  may  be 
considered  to  be  complete. 

In  the  early  Christian  centuries  the  orthodox  church 
declared  that  the  New  Testament  was  an  infallible  inter- 
preter of  Old  Testament  utterances.  But  from  Justin's 
Dialogue  with  Trypho  and  Origen's  Against  Celsus  it  is  evi- 
dent that  proofs  from  prophecy  so  viewed  were  questioned, 
not  only  by  heathen  who  may  have  lacked  proper  appercep- 
tion for  understanding  the  Old  Testament,  but  also  by  Jews 
who  thought  that  the  Christians  gave  an  interpretation  to 
prophecies  that  was  contrary  to  their  original  meaning.  The 
already  often-mentioned  allegorical  method  of  interpretation, 
like  a  parallelogram  of  forces,  served  to  resolve  such  in- 
equalities. But  with  the  collapse  of  the  method  the  solution 
was  discredited. 

In  early  Protestantism  a  new  method  obtained,  by  which 
the  New  Testament  interpretation  of  Old  Testament  pas- 
sages was  harmonized  with  the  local  meaning  of  those  pas- 
sages. The  hypothesis  that  such  passages  had  a  double 
meaning — the  one  immediate,  the  other  remote — was  resort- 
ed to.  It  was  assumed  that  the  psychological  basis  of  this 
hypothesis  was  a  dual  consciousness  on  the  part  of  the  Old 
Testament  writers.  But  in  opposition  to  this  hypothesis  it 
was  pointed  out,  first,  that  certain  New  Testament  quotations 


114    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

expressly  exclude  the  immediate  meaning;  and,  secondly, 
that  the  so-called  dual  consciousness  was  psychologically 
improbable,  that  it  were  better  for  theologians  to  assume  but 
one  human  consciousness  and  discard  so  vulnerable  an  hypoth- 
esis. Still  the  position  was  not  immediately  abandoned. 
It  survived  in  the  contention  that  the  prophet  had  a  glim- 
mer of  the  more  remote  higher  meaning  of  the  utterances 
along  with  the  immediate  sense  and  purpose.  To  this  modi- 
fied assumption  of  the  double  meaning  of  prophecies,  Socin- 
ians  and  Arminians  added  another  rule,  which  had  to  do 
with  the  word  "that  it  might  be  fulfilled" — holding  that 
these  words  only  indicate  that  there  is  a  similarity  in  the 
passages,  or  that  the  Old  Testament  passage  admits  of 
application  to  the  New  Testament  event,  not  exactly  that  it 
predicts  that  event. 

The  German  rationalists,  with  their  usual  vigor,  urged 
that  the  Old  Testament  contained  no  prophecies,  i.  e.,  defi- 
nite predictions  concerning  Jesus  Christ,  no  description  of 
the  life,  vocation,  sufferings,  death,  and  resurrection  of 
Jesus ;  but  that  all  the  prophetic  descriptions  of  the  Messiah 
and  messianic  kingdom  referred  to  the  historical  and  human, 
to  be  explained  without  resort  to  miraculous  prevision.  It 
was  not  uniformly  said — there  were  exceptions — that  Jesus 
and  the  apostles  erroneously  interpreted  the  Old  Testament 
prophecies  contrary  to  their  original  meaning.  Rather,  it  was 
said  that  they  did  not  introduce  these  passages  or  prophecies, 
but  applied  them  freely  as  we  now  apply  passages  of  Scrip- 
ture to  persons  and  events  without  thinking  that  the  pas- 
sages had  the  reference  which  we  give  them;  i.  e.,  the 
Old  Testament  was  used  for  purposes  of  edification.  But 
the  rationalists  were  forced  by  their  opponents  to  face  the 
question  as  to  whether  Jesus'  own  references  to  his  death 
and  resurrection  were  mere  edificatory  passages.  It  was  said 
that  only  violent  interpretation  can  ignore  prediction  here. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       115 

The  rationalists  made  a  twofold  reply:  first,  the  hypothesis 
that  Jesus,  as  soon  as  he  grew  clear  as  to  his  duty  and  com- 
prehended the  historical  situation,  foresaw  the  empirical 
inevitability  of  his  death,  and  that  thus  no  miraculous  super- 
naturalism  is  required  to  explain  his  forebodings ;  or,  secondly, 
such  narratives  are  a  New  Testament  case  of  vaticinia  post 
eventum.  And  it  must  be  granted  that  either  of  these 
"hypotheses  is  sufficient  to  cast  a  fatal  doubt  upon  the  argu- 
ment from  predictive  prophecy  as  employed  in  the  religion  of 
authority.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  owing  to  the  histori- 
cal necessity  of  vindicating  the  new  religion  by  appeal  to 
the  traditional  canonical  authority,  apologists  had  to  find 
proof  in  the  Old  Testament  that  the  life  and  works  of  Jesus 
were  messianic,  or  else  have  no  proof  at  all  that  would  meet 
the  case ;  and  so  they  culled  from  the  Old  Testament  those 
passages  that  appeared  to  have  messianic  reference. 

To  sum  up:  At  first  men  thought  that  "prophecy" 
referred  to  the  distant  future  and  not  at  all  to  the  present. 
Then  they  attributed  a  dual  consciousness  to  the  writer's 
mind.  Afterward  they  made  a  typical  interpretation  of  the 
prophecies.  Lastly  they  reversed  their  first  position  and 
held  that  the  prophecies  referred  to  the  present  and  not  to 
the  future.  It  was  now  incumbent  upon  them  to  give  a 
psychological  explanation  of  the  New  Testament  usage  of 
Old  Testament  passages.  Briefly  expressed,  the  develop- 
ment ran  through  the  following  stages:  prophecy  may  have 
(a)  literal  reference  to  the  future;  (6)  typical  reference  to 
the  future;  (c)  dual  reference  to  the  present  and  the  future; 
(d)  no  reference  to  the  future. 

4.  The  evidential  value  of  miracles  is  the  mainstay  of 
authority-religion.  Instead  of  being  naturally  or  historically 
or  psychologically  mediated,  miraculous  events  are  due  to 
immediate  particular  volitions  of  Deity'  by  virtue  of  which 

1  The  so-called  "religious"  miracle  of  the  Eitschlians  does  not  have  any  place 
in  this  historical  discassioa. 


116   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

there  are  causes  without  their  usual  effects,  or  effects  without 
their  usual  causes- — metaphysical  miracle.  Hence  the  writ- 
ings, the  rule  of  faith  and  practice,  in  which  the  miraculous 
narratives  are  imbedded,  are  likewise  traceable  to  divine 
causality;  but,  if  so,  are  infallible  and  divinely  authori- 
tative. 

This  doctrine  of  miracles  as  means  of  proof  of  the  divinity 
of  Christianity  remained  unshaken  in  the  church  down  to 
modern  times.  Not  that  it  enjoyed  immunity  from  attack. 
The  opponents  of  Jesus  said  that  he  did  miracles  by  the 
help  of  demonic  powers.  In  the  early  centuries,  when  this 
reproach  was  repeated,  the  church  fathers  met  it  by  pointing 
to  the  moral  character  and  teaching  of  Jesus,  which  were 
unthinkable  were  he  in  league  with  the  devil.  But,  logically, 
there  is  something  suspicious  in  this  argument,  inasmuch  as 
it  is  said  both  that  the  miracles  proved  the  teachings  divine 
and  that  the  teachings  proved  the  miracles  divine.  This  de- 
fect in  the  proof  from  miracles,  however,  was  attributed  to 
those  miracles  which  were  capable  of  producing  only  a  fides 
humana,  while  the  fides  divina  could  be  effectuated  only  by 
the  inner  witness  of  the  Spirit.  The  lack  of  cogency  of 
this  proof  from  the  inner  witness  has  been  set  forth  in  a 
previous  connection.  But  those  who  saw  this  put  all  the 
greater  stress  upon  the  proof  from  miracles,  while  restrict- 
ing the  miraculous  to  the  fewest  possible  cases.  Indeed, 
there  have  ever  been  church  teachers  who  have  degraded 
biblical  miracles,  partly,  to  the  great  miracle  of  nature  as  a 
whole;  partly,  to  the  moral  effects  of  Christianity.  But 
whether  Philo  declared  that  the  miracles  of  Moses  were 
child's  play  as  compared  with  the  truly  great  miracle  of 
creation ;  or  Augustine  and  Luther  reproached  the  obtuseness 
of  the  multitude  who  wonder  only  at  the  miraculous;  or 
Luther  depreciated  nature  miracle  in  favor  of  Spirit  miracle 
—  in    all   these   expressions  neither  the  possibility,  nor  the 


Dissolution  of  Authoeity-Religion       117 

reality,  nor  the  cogency  of  miracle  as  proof,  was  assailed. 
Even  Calvin  made  much  of  the  proof  from  miracles,  though 
he  harshly  criticised  the  Lutherans  for  their  doctrine  of  the 
ubiquity  of  Christ,  saying  that  they  did  not  feel  sure  of 
omnipotence  unless  they  tore  the  whole  fabric  of  nature  into 
pieces  by  a  self-made  miracle/ 

It  was  Spinoza  who  first  gave  the  concept  of  miracles  a 
blow  which  resounded  first  in  England  among  the  deists,  then 
in  Germany,  and  which  had  great  influence  on  all  the  sub- 
sequent development  of  theology.  It  may  be  said  that  there 
has  been  a  strained  relation  ever  since,  as  regards  the  miracu- 
lous, between  philosophy  and  ecclesiastical  Christianity.  A 
reproduction  of  his  argument  follows.  To  begin  with,  the 
conception  of  God  as  Absolute  does  not  comport  with  the 
idea  of  single  ads  which  the  Absolute  was  said  to  perform  in 
the  course  of  time.^  This  consideration  was  urged  against 
the  thinkableness  of  miracles.  For  the  rest,  Spinoza's 
investigation  concerning  miracles  fell  into  two  parts,  philo- 
sophical and  exegetical.  The  former  investigated  the  possi- 
bility and  demonstrative  power  of  the  miraculous;  the 
latter,  the  reality  of  miracles.  As  to  the  possibility  of 
miracles,  there  were  two  questions:  Is  a  miracle  compatible 
with  the  nature  of  God  in  his  relation  to  nature  ?  Can  a 
miracle  be  known  by  man  as  miracle  ?  The  former  concerns 
the  objective,  the  latter  the  subjective,  possibility  of  miracles. 
The  former,  according  to  Spinoza,  can  be  affirmed  only  by 
him  who  puts  God  and  nature  in  juxtaposition  as  two  sepa- 
rate substances,  in  such  a  way  that  the  activity  of  the  one 

i/ns<.,  IV,  17,  25. 

2  Leibnitz  thought  that  he  found  an  essential  alleviation  of  the  conceivability 
of  miracles  by  making  higher  beings,  e.  g.,  angels,  instead  of  God,  the  authors  of 
miracles  in  most  cases.  By  virtue  of  their  exaltation  above  nature,  they  could 
produce  results  in  nature  that  could  not  be  explained  from  nature's  own  forces. 
Moreover,  being  finite  beings,  their  agency  did  not  contradict  the  idea  of  the  con- 
summation of  single  acts  (Theodicee,  III,  249J.  Of  course,  this  uncritically  assumes 
the  existence  of  angels. 


118    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

excludes  that  of  the  other.  If  the  laws  of  nature  are  some- 
thing in  themselves,  and  the  act  of  the  Divine  will  is  some- 
thing different  therefrom,  then,  since  one  such  act  of  will 
originally  posited  the  laws  of  nature,  another  such  act  can 
wholly  or  partially  suspend  those  laws.  But,  according  to 
Spinoza,  God  and  nature  are  not  two,  but  one.  "Deus  sive 
substantia  sive  natura.'"  The  laws  of  nature  are  the  will 
of  God  in  independent  actualization.  Therefore  an  occur- 
rence contravening  the  laws  of  nature  contradicts  the  will  of 
God.  To  affirm  that  God  does  something  contrary  to  the 
laws  of  nature  is  tantamount  to  affirming  that  he  does  some- 
thing contrary  to  his  own  nature. 

The  subterfuge  of  the  distinction  between  the  supernatural 
and  the  contra-  or  anti-natural  falls  away  of  itself  from  this 
point  of  view.  For  if  nature,  as  the  self-realization  of  the 
Divine  Being,  is  homogeneous  with  the  latter,  then  it  is  infi- 
nite, and,  if  infinite,  there  can  be  nothing  apart  from  it  nor 
above  it.  This  consideration  aside,  if  by  hypothesis  miracle 
occurs  in  nature,  but  not  according  to  the  laws  of  nature, 
then  the  otherwise  universal  validity  and  operation  of  those 
laws  are  interrupted  in  the  case  of  miracle.  But  this  inter- 
ruption of  inviolable  order  is  in  contradiction  of  that  order. 
Thus,  since  nothing  occurs  in  nature  save  according  to  its 
laws,  it  follows  that  the  term  "miracle"  is  to  be  understood 
only  relatively;  i.  e.,  with  reference  to  the  opinions  of  men. 
It  designates  a  phenomenon  whose  natural  causes  we  do  not 
know.  Hence  miracle  is  subjective.  How,  now,  psychologi- 
cally, does  it  come  to  be  thought  of  as  objective  ?     There  are 

1  still,  this  expression  must  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  following :  "  The 
supposition  of  some  that  I  endeavor  to  prove  ....  the  unity  of  God  and  nature 
(meaning  by  the  latter  a  certain  mass  or  corporeal  matter),  is  wholly  erroneous."  — 
Spinoza  to  Oldenberg,  Letter  XXI.  Underlying  Spinoza's  theory  of  miracles  is  his 
religious  philosophy,  of  which  this  same  letter  gives  fine  summary:  "I  hold  that 
God  is  of  all  things  the  cause  immanent,  as  the  phrase  is,  not  transeunt.  I  say  that 
all  things  are  in  God  and  move  in  God,  thus  agreeing  with  Paul,  and,  perhaps,  with 
all  the  ancient  philosophers,  though  the  phraseology  may  be  different;  I  will  even 
venture  to  affirm  that  I  agree  with  all  the  ancient  Hebrews,  in  so  far  as  one  may 
judge  from  their  traditions,  though  these  are  in  many  ways  corrupted." 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       119 

three  stages:  First,  I  do  not  know  that  the  phenomenon  in 
question  has  a  natural  cause ;  secondly,  the  phenomenon  in 
question  does  not  have  a  natural  cause;  thirdly,  the  imme- 
diate cause  of  the  phenomenon  is  God.  Does  this  carry  con- 
viction with  it?  Suppose  that  there  is  sense  in  the  argu- 
ment that  a  phenomenon  which  does  not  have  a  natural 
cause  must  be  produced  of  God;  then  everyone  who  denies 
the  natural  causation  of  a  phenomenon  must  know  the  whole 
scope  of  causation ;  otherwise  there  would  remain  the  possi- 
bility that  the  given  phenomenon  had  had  a  natural  force 
unknown  to  us  as  a  cause.  Since  now  no  one  can  safely  claim 
such  a  comprehensive  natural  knowledge,  miracle,  even  if  it 
were  objective,  could  never  be  certainly  known  by  us  as  such. 
"You  seem  to  many  to  take  away  the  authority  and  value 
of  miracles,  whereby  alone,  as  nearly  all  Christians  believe, 
the  certainty  of  the  divine  revelation  can  be  established," 
writes  Oldenberg  to  Spinoza.  "As  regards  miracles,  I  am 
of  the  opinion  that  the  revelation  of  God  can  be  established 
only  by  the  wisdom  of  the  doctrine,  not  by  miracles,  or,  iiL 
other  words,  by  ignorance,"  replies  Spinoza.  "  In  what  sense^ 
do  you  take  miracles  and  ignorance  to  be  synonymous  and. 
equivalent  terms?"  inquires  Oldenberg  again. 

I  have  taken  miracles  and  ignorance  as  equivalent  terms  because 
those  who  endeavor  to  establish  the  truth  of  religion  by  means  of 
miracles  seek  to  prove  the  obscure  by  what  is  more  obscure  and 
completely  unknown,  thus  introducing  a  new  sort  of  argument,  the 

reduction,  not  to  the  absurd,  as  the  phrase  is,  but  to  ignorance 

Do  we  possess  sufficient  knowledge  of  nature  as  to  be  able  to  lay 
down  the  limits  of  its  force  and  power,  or  to  say  that  a  given  thing 
surpasses  that  power?  No  one  could  go  so  far  without  arrogance. 
We  may,  therefore,  without  presumption,  explain  miracles  as  far 
as  possible  by  natural  causes.  When  we  cannot  explain  them,  nor 
even  prove  their  impossibility,  we  may  well  suspend  our  judgment 
about  them,  and  establish  religion,  as  I  have  said,  solely  by  the 
wisdom  of  its  doctrines.' 

1  Letters  XX-XXIII. 


120    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

As  result  of  this  philosophical  investigation,  Spinoza 
carried  over  into  the  exegetical  investigation  the  objective  as 
well  as  the  subjective  impossibility  of  miracles,  together  with 
their  incapacity  to  prove  the  immediate  divinity  of  the 
biblical  tradition  in  which  they  were  imbedded.  According 
to  him,  everything  narrated  in  the  Scriptures  must  have 
occurred  naturally  or  not  at  all.  In  this  connection,  Spinoza 
has  the  merit  of  being  among  the  first  to  show  that,  accord- 
ing to  the  mode  of  speech  of  the  Hebrews  and  its  popular 
end,  the  Bible  referred  natural  or  historical  phenomena 
immediately  to  God  as  first  and  universal  cause,  without 
intending  thereby  to  exclude  particular  middle  causes.* 
Summing  up,  to  the  questions,  Can  miracles  occur?  Can 
they  be  known  as  such?  Can  a  miracle  prove  the  divinity 
of  revelation?  Are  the  biblical  narratives  to  be  understood 
as  necessarily  involving  miracles? — Spinoza  gave  a  negative 
answer.  The  religion  of  authority,  or  traditionalism,  treas- 
ures tradition  only  on  the  basis  of  its  origin,  instead  of  its 
worth,  its  serviceableness  in  the  spiritual  development  of 
humanity — and  stays  it  on  authority;  and,  in  doing  so,  not 
only  forfeits  its  availability,  but  also  makes  any  independent 
investigation  of  truth  impossible.  Without  agreeing  with 
Spinoza's  affirmation  of  the  impossibility  of  miracle — ^a 
necessity  of  his  philosophic  system  —  the  appreciation  of  the 
biblical  tradition  on  the  basis,  not  of  its  miraculous  origin, 
but  of  its  historical  and  psychological  function,  to  which 
Spinoza  pointed  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  is  at  once 
the  overthrow  in  principle  of  authority-religion  and  a  support 
of  the  religion  of  personality.  And  the  supersession  of  his 
rationalism  by  our  pragmatism  but  supplies  the  appropriate 
philosophical  presupposition  to  his  own  conclusions  in  this 
field. 

i£.  g.,  1  Sam.  9:  15,  16:  "  God  sent  Saul  to  Samuel."  ButSaul's  going  to  Samuel 
■was  due,  according  to  the  narrative,  to  tlie  search  for  his  father's  asses.  See  Gen. 
9:3;  Pss.  104:  4,5;  147:  15,  18;  etc. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       121 


Hume  put  the  question  as  follows:  Can  the  biblical  nar- 
ratives— nay,  any  narratives  —  make  a  miracle  —  /.  e.^  a 
deviation  from  the  course  of  nature — credible?  If  Spinoza 
attacked  the  possibility  and  efficacy  of  miracle  on  the  basis  of 
certain  philosophical  presuppositions,  Hume  attacked  the 
credibility  of  miracle  on  the  ground  that  human  testimony  is 
inadequate  to  accredit  such  occurrence.  The  following  is  an 
outline  of  his  argument:  We  put  confidence  in  the  tes- 
timony of  historical  writers  because  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
finding  that  their  statements  agree  with  the  facts.  But  this 
rule,  like  all  others,  is  not  without  its  exceptions.  Ever 
according  to  the  character,  partly  of  the  statements,  partly  of 
the  supposed  facts,  there  are  degrees  of  deviation  of  state- 
ments from  facts,  consequently  degrees  of  the  credibility  of 
statements.  Thus  the  statements  of  but  a  few,  or  contra- 
dictory statements  of  many,  would  be  more  frequently  unreli- 
able than  what  several  men  had  said  harmoniously.  But, 
with  the  most  desirable  character  of  the  witness,  it  still 
depends  upon  the  nature  of  the  facts  witnessed  whether  we 
can  believe  the  witness  or  not — that  is,  the  incredibility  of  a 
given  fact  is  enough  to  weaken  the  credibility  of  an  other- 
wise reliable  man.  This  is  the  case  even  if  the  fact  lies 
within  the  limits  of  the  natural.  What  if  the  accredited  fact 
be  a  miracle  ?  A  miracle  is  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  nature, 
and  since  a  fixed,  exceptionless  experience  has  established 
these  laws,  the  proof  against  a  miracle  which  is  drawn  from 
this  behavior  of  the  supposed  fact  is  as  complete  as  possible 
from  experience.  What  kind  of  character  must  a  witness 
have  to  authenticate  such  an  occurrence  as  that  wine  was 
drawn  from  a  jar  in  which  there  was  only  water?  He  must 
belong  to  a  class  of  witnesses  from  which  no  deception  or 
delusion  ever  comes.  In  other  words,  the  falseness  of  the 
witness  must  be  a  greater  miracle  than  the  fact  accredited  by 
him.      But  what  human  witness  offers  such  certainty?     In 


122    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

all  history  we  find  no  miracle  which  was  (a)  attested  by  a 
sufficient  number  [b]  of  sufficiently  expert  persons  to  exclude 
the  possibility  of  self-deception,  who  (c)  would  be  so  honest 
that  an  intentional  deception  would  be  unthinkable.  Thus 
the  grounds  of  the  truth  of  miraculous  narratives  are 
insufficient.  But,  to  take  a  step  farther,  there  are  reasons 
which  tell  against  the  truth.  So  many  examples  of  invented 
miracles  and  prophesyings  which  have  been  unmasked  as 
deceptions  in  all  ages,  either  by  clear  proof  or  by  reveal- 
ing their  discrepancy,  prove  sufficiently  the  strong  bent  of 
the  human  race  to  the  miraculous  and  the  extraordinary,  and 
should  make  us  distrustful  toward  all  narratives  of  this  kind. 
Finally,  we  have  no  witness  to  a  miracle  against  which  a  bulk 
of  counter-evidence  may  not  be  adduced.  Besides,  miracles 
are  said  to  occur  in  every  religion,  as  proof  of  the  exclusive 
divinity  of  that  religion.  Moreover,  there  are  non-biblical 
miracles  which  exceed  biblical  ones  in  documentariness  and 
credibility.  The  result  of  all  these  considerations  is,  accord- 
ing to  Hume,  that  no  human  witness  for  miracles  of  any 
kind  rises  to  probability,  much  less  to  historical  certainty. 
Even  supposing  there  were  historical  certainty,  there  still 
remains  the  character  of  the  miraculous  event  opposing  the 
historic  evidence.  Therefore  we  can  assume  as  a  principle 
that  no  human  witness  suffices  to  prove  a  miracle  and  to  make 
it  a  sure  basis  of  a  religious  system.' 

It  is  significant  that  Kant^  introduces  his  conception  and 
criticism  of  miracle  in  connection  with  his  discussion  of 
redemptive  faith.  What  gives  to  the  life  of  Jesus  its  redeem- 
ing power  ?  he  asks.  It  is  simply  and  only  his  good  will — that 
will  which,  by  its  moral  perfection,  endures  victoriously  the 
temptation  of  the  world  and  suffering  till  death.  Posit  the 
redeeming  power  in  anything  other  than  the  moral  will,  and 

1  Human  Understanding,  chap,  x,  and  Essay  on  Miracles,  etc. 
^Religioti  innerhalb  der  blossen  Vernunft,  Zweites  Stuck,  Abschnitt  II. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       123 

redemption  and  the  "good  principle"  cease  to  be  an  object 
of  rational  faith.  That  other  power,  which  is  not  moral  will 
and  good  disposition,  and  yet  which  is  said  to  be  valid  either 
as  condition  or  as  criterion  of  a  life  that  redeems,  is  a  super- 
natural, wonder-working  power.  In  that  case  redemptive 
faith  is  based  on  faith  in  miracle,  which  Christ  himself 
stigmatized  and  rejected:  "Except  ye  see  signs  and  wonders, 
ye  will  not  believe."  Miracle  as  an  outer  sign  does  not 
belong  to  moral  faith,  but  to  a  religion  which  consists  in 
outer  signs,  in  ceremonies,  and  in  cultus.  The  presence  of 
God  is  announced  by  means  of  an  external,  sensible  fact; 
i.  e.,  a  miracle.  Faith  in  miracle  is  explained  by  the  char- 
acter of  this  kind  of  religion.  Historical  development  avoids 
leaps,  requires  steady  transition  in  its  external  course.  If, 
now,  there  shall  be  an  end  to  religion  of  mere  cultus  and 
observance,  and  the  birth  of  a  religion  founded  in  spirit 
and  truth,  then  the  survival  of  faith  in  miracles  in  the 
beginnings  of  such  religion  will  be  psychologically  the 
redemption-faith,  and  the  miracle-faith  may  be  combined 
in  this  historical  transition. 

But  it  is  a  different  matter  when  miracle-faith  is  dogmati- 
cally made  the  basis  of  redemption-faith,  the  wonder-working 
power  a  condition  of  the  redeeming  power.  Proportion- 
ately, faith  in  redemption  loses  its  practical  and  truly 
religious  importance  when  it  is  based  on  faith  in  miracles. 
The  object  of  the  miracle-faith  is  an  external  fact;  but  faith 
in  a  fact  [Begebenheit)  is  not  religious,  but  historical.  Mir- 
acle is  a  siipcrnatui'al  affair  occurring  in  contradiction  to 
natural  laws,  through  whose  temporary  abrogation  alone  it 
is  possible.  An  outer  fact  is  knowable  only  through  outer 
experience;  only  facts  of  a  natural-legal  character  can  be 
experienced;  natural  causality  is  the  condition  of  all  outer 
experience.  Consequently  there  is  no  experience  of  miracle. 
Whether  miracle  be  possible  or  not,  our  experience  of  miracle 


124:    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

is  not  possible.  Equally  impossible  is  it  for  an  outer  occur- 
rence to  have  redeeming  power.  It  would  be  redemption 
by  magic  for  an  occurrence  independently  of  me  and  my 
disposition  to  redeem  me!  Miracle-faith  is  not  7-eligious. 
A  theistic  miracle  would  be  an  act  of  God  in  violation  of  the 
natural  order  of  things.  Now,  it  is  only  through  the  order 
of  nature  that  we  can  form  an  idea  of  the  divine  mode  of 
operation.  If,  however,  there  be  divine  activities  which 
disrupt  and  abrogate  the  natural  order  of  things,  we  can  then 
form  no  idea  any  longer  of  the  divine  agencies.  Theistic 
miracle  annuls  the  possibility  of  a  theistic  idea,  and  there- 
with itself  as  well.  But  in  that  case  theistic  miracle  can  no 
longer  be  distinguished  from  demonic,  since  the  criterion  of 
evaluation  is  gone. 

Miracles  are  possible  only  in  violation  of  natural  laws. 
The  latter  admits  of  no  exception.  They  are  valid  without 
exception,  or  not  at  all.  If  there  be  miracle,  there  are  no 
natural  laws,  therefore  no  natural  science,  no  theoretical 
knowledge.  Thus  Kant  opposed  miracles  in  behalf  both  of 
the  religious  and  of  the  scientific  interest. 

Brief  mention  may  now  be  made  of  how  subsequent  time 
sought  partly  to  work  out  the  criticisms  by  Spinoza,  Hume, 
and   Kant  still  further,  and  partly   to  limit  their  criticism. 

a)  Reflection  reverted  to  the  vindication  of  the  possibility 
of  miracle.  The  efPort  to  renew,  despite  Spinoza,  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  supernatural  and  the  anti-  or  contra- 
natural,  was  innocuous.  More  significance  is  to  be  attached 
to  the  school  of  Schelling  and  Hegel,  according  to  which  the 
possibility  of  miracle  was  sought  to  be  proved  from  the  rela- 
tion of  spirit  to  nature,  and  from  that  of  the  finite  spirit  to 
the  absolute.  What  is  willed  in  the  spirit  of  truth  and 
purity  is  willed  in  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  it  is  only  a  postu- 
late of  reason  that  nature  does  not  strive  against  such  a  will. 
Therefore  Christ  was  a  worker  of  miracles,  and  the  time  of 


Dissolution  of  Authoeity-Religion       125 

his  work  on  earth  was  a  time  of  signs  and  wonders.  But 
Strauss  replied  that  the  Divine  Will  is  the  existence  and 
persistence  of  the  laws  of  nature,  and  that  therefore  a  human 
will  at  one  with  the  divine  would  obey  those  laws,  and  abstain 
from  every  irruption  into  nature  which  varied  from  the 
ordered  human  activity  in  nature.  According  to  another 
Hegelian  modification,  miracle  is  a  determination  of  nature 
by  Spirit  in  such  a  way  that  nature  is  able  to  offer  no  oppo- 
sition to  the  will  of  the  Spirit.  Since  nature  is  not  the 
ground  of  its  own  self,  but  Spirit  is  the  principle  of  its 
becoming,  nature  is  also  incapable  of  being  a  limit  to  Spirit. 
This  power  was  fully  embodied  in  Christ,  since  through  the 
purity  of  his  will  he  was  free  from  nature  as  was  no  other 
man.  The  greater  miracle  was  not  his  foregoing  the  use  of 
means,  but  his  using  them ;  for  in  using  means  and  media- 
tions he  did  not  give  free  course  to  a  mode  of  action  which 
was  alone  natural  to  his  supernatural  character.  But  it  was 
easy  for  Strauss  to  point  out  that  all  this  leads  to  absurdities. 
It  cannot  do  otherwise  if  one  seeks  to  deduce  concrete  events 
or  facts  from  a  concept  so  indefinite  as  the  power  of  Spirit 
over  nature.  As  Hegel's  philosophy  of  art  could  have  been 
written  without  his  having  ever  seen  a  single  creation  of  the 
artistic  genius,  so  the  Hegelian  doctrine  of  miracles  supposes 
no  acquaintance  with  miraculous  stories.  To  be  sure,  Spirit 
has  power  over  nature,  but  not  the  Spirit  that  desires  to 
make  inroads  into  nature,  to  fly,  or  to  walk  on  water;  but 
that  Spirit  which  moves  quietly  in  nature  as  nature's  law  and 
formative  impulse;  that  Spirit  which  becomes  lord  of  nature, 
not  by  magic,  but  by  patient  toil  as  understanding  and  will. 
HegeFs  view  of  miracle  is  as  if  one  were  not  satisfied  with 
eating  cherries,  pears,  apples,  but  wanted  to  eat  fruit  as  such  I 
h)  Next,  the  knowability  of  miracle,  which  Kant  denied, 
was  re-examined  by  naturalists  and  rationalists,  supplying 
nothing  new,  however.     To  be  sure,  the  defenders  of  mira- 


126   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

cles  appealed  to  the  limitedness  of  human  knowledge  as  a 
defense,  while  Spinoza  had  inferred  the  unknowability  of 
miracles  therefrom.  Centuries  ago  the  power  and  utility  of 
steam,  as  known  today,  would  have  seemed  unbelievable. 
According  to  the  principle  of  skeptical  criticism,  it  would 
have  once  been  declared  an  impossibility  for  ships  to  run 
without  rudder  and  sail.  Similarly,  at  the  time  of  Jesus 
things  happened  which  appear  now  to  be  impossibilities. 
Kant  had  already  anticipated  this  argument,  and  character- 
ized it  as  juggling.  It  is  required  that  the  laws  of  the 
miraculous  shall  be  made  known  as  accurately  as  the  laws  of 
steam  and  electricity,  before  we  validate  the  comparison. 

c)  As  to  the  reality  of  miracles,  the  Catholic  miracles 
were  so  exaggerated  and  incredible  that  Protestants  were  led 
to  deny  the  continuance  of  miracles  in  Christianity  after  the 
apostolic  age.  But  it  was  urged  that  the  Protestant  point 
was  not  well  taken ;  for,  if  miracles  are  possible  once,  they  are 
possible  always.  Granted!  was  the  reply;  but  miracle  was 
needed  at  the  beginning  of  Christianity,  not  for  its  propaga- 
tion through  the  centuries.  To  which  the  rejoinder  was: 
What  greater  need  than  a  miracle  now  to  settle  the  attack  of 
science  and  philosophy  against  miracle  ?  Finally,  Paulus  in 
his  naturalistic  explanation  of  the  gospel  narratives  was 
continuous  with  Spinoza's  thought  of  the  silence  of  the  Bible 
concerning  middle  or  secondary  causes.  Those  who  aban- 
doned miraculous  supernaturalism  had  recourse  to  one  of 
two  alternatives:  (1)  explanation  by  insertion  of  the  natural 
causes — rationalism;  or  (2),  since  this  was  difficult  with  re- 
gard to  so  distant  a  past,  the  mythical  and  legendary  hypoth- 
esis. The  latter,  having  been  efPectively  employed  by  Nie- 
buhr  in  secular  history,  and  having  already  served  a  good 
turn  in  the  explanation  of  non-Christian  religions  in  such  a 
way  as  to  set  aside  the  idea  of  deception  as  a  source  of  those 
religions,  came  at  length  to  be  adopted,  by  those  who  made 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion        127 

themselves  competent  to  have  an  opinion  on  the  subject,  as 
that  hypothesis  which  best  satisfied  at  once  the  intellectual 
and  the  religious  interests  of  the  human  spirit.  According 
to  this  point  of  view,  the  miraculous  story  is  not  at  first  the 
cause,  but  the  product  or  expression,  of  faith — not  the  faith 
of  a  single  individual,  but  the  collective  faith  of  a  community. 
Thus,  on  the  one  hand,  the  myth  is  no  longer,  as  in  antique 
thought,  held  to  be  historical  reality,  but,  on  the  other,  it  is 
not  held  to  be  illusion  and  superstition — this  would  be  a 
coarse  error,  pardonable  in  eighteenth-century  rationalism, 
but  not  in  the  historically  trained  thought  of  modern  science. 
It  is  precisely  myths,  and  their  concomitant  rites  in  which 
mythical  material  is  dramatically  visualized,  which,  disen- 
gaged from  their  temporal  form,  and  erected  to  a  continuous 
process,  everywhere  became  the  most  original  and  the  most 
powerful  mode  of  expression  of  the  peculiar  genius  of  every 
religion. 

As  to  the  value  of  miracle  for  purposes  of  proof  of  the 
divinity  of  religion,  Lessing's  famous  statement  was  made 
much  of:  "The  accidental  truths  of  history  can  never  prove 
the  eternal  truths  of  reason."  Lessing  did  not  believe  in  the 
cogency  of  the  argument  from  miracles.  To  him  the  spirit 
cannot  be  authenticated  by  the  unspiritual ;  for  the  spiritual 
is  higher,  and  is  self -authenticating.  The  self-authenticating 
authority  of  faith  rendered  proof  unnecessary.  To  believe 
in  miracle  is  not  the  same  as  to  believe  in  Christ.  One  may 
believe  in  Christ  without  believing  in  miracles,  and  vice 
versa.     So  Lessing. 

Most  recent  thought  surrenders  miraculum,  but  retains 
mivabile.  By  the  latter  is  meant,  not  supernatural  powers, 
but  natural  powers  of  a  higher  order.  But  on  this  hypoth- 
esis all  power  of  proof  is  likewise  gone;  for  this  is  equivalent 
to  denying  miracle  as  an  effect  in  nature  caused  by  a  divine 
power   not  in  nature.     Besides,  even  the  higher  order  of 


128    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

nature  is  still  nature,  and  cannot  authenticate  a  religious 
founder  that  is  above  nature.  This  is  but  a  new  device  which 
apologists — or,  rather,  ecclesiastical  diplomatists — have  of 
explaining  the  miracles  of  the  past.  They  invoke  the  action 
of  laws  as  yet  unknown  which  are  supposed  to  have  modified 
the  course  of  the  laws  we  at  present  know;  that  is,  miracles 
are  in  violation  of  the  laws  which  we  know,  but  in  harmony 
with  the  laws  which  we  do  not  know.  But  how  is  it  possible 
for  them  to  know  that  miracles  are  in  harmony  with  laws 
that  we  do  not  know?  "At  Cana  Jesus  took  water  to  make 
wine,  and  on  the  hillside  of  Galilee  he  took  the  five  loaves 
to  make  bread,  just  as  in  ten  thousand  vineyards  today  he  is 
turning  the  moisture  of  the  earth  into  the  juice  of  the  grape,, 
and  in  ten  thousand  fields  is  turning  carbon  into  corn.'" 
Paulsen  somewhere  says  that  nonsense  has  one  advantage  in 
common  with  sense:  you  cannot  refute  it.  True;  yet  it  may 
be  pointed  out  that,  while  this  is  an  argument  from  analogy,  it 
is  a  misfit.  One  might  say  that  as  moisture  of  the  earth  was 
turned  into  grape-juice  in  Galilee  then,  so  it  is  moisture  that 
makes  grape-juice  here  and  now;  or,  that  as  it  was  Jesus  who 
turned  moisture  into  grape-juice  then,  so  it  is  he  who  does 
it  now.  Similarly,  in  case  there  was  only  water  in  the  jar 
at  one  moment,  while  at  the  next  wine  was  drawn  from  the 
jar  by  his  power  then,  we  might  assume  that  the  same 
phenomenon  would  recur  today  under  the  same  conditions. 
But  to  argue  that  as  Jesus  turns  qaoisture  into  grape-juice  in 
the  vineyard,  so  he  turned  water  into  wine  in  the  jar,  is  to 
overlook  the  main  items,  which  are  the  difference  between 
the  soil  and  the  jar,  the  mediation  of  the  grapevine,  and  the 
element  of  time,  and  the  fact  that  the  grape-juice  in  the  grape 
is  not  wine^in  a  word,  it  is  to  overlook  that  there  is  no  anal- 
ogy at  all  between  what  purports  to  be  a  result  of  particular 
immediate  volition  of  Jesus,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  orderly 

1 "  The  Word  and  Way,"  June  2, 1904 ;  address  by  President  A.  H.  Steong. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Keligion        129 

gradual  processes  of  nature  on  the  other.  Moreover,  the 
assertion  that  it  is  Jesus  who  turns  the  moisture  of  the  earth 
into  the  juice  of  the  grape  not  only  assumes  what  is  required 
to  be  proved,  but  has  no  warrant  in  Scripture,  since  he  tells 
us  that  it  is  his  Father'  who  does  such  things ;  nor  in  reason, 
which  stops  with  natural  causation  and  the  ultimate  principle 
of  unity  underlying  it.  In  general,  the  tacit  syllogism  of 
the  distinofuished  dogmatician  and  ecclesiastic  is  as  follows  : 
The  kind  of  occurrence  which  certainly  happens  today 
could  have  happened  in  the  past,  since  nature  is  uniform; 
miracles,  witness  what  goes  on  in  grapevines  and  cornstalks, 
occur  today ;  therefore  miracles  occurred  in  the  past ;  witness 
the  turning  of  water  into  wine  at  Cana !  And  yet  we 
wonder  that  the  intelligent  public  has  lost  confidence  in  its 
religious  leaders. 

One  more  instance  from  the  same  address  of  this  sort 
of  apologetic  must  suffice:  "The  virgin  birth  of  Christ  may 
be  an  extreme  instance  of  parthenogenesis,  which  Professor 
Loeb  has  demonstrated  to  take  place  in  other  than  the  lowest 
forms  of  life,  and  which  he  believes  to  be  possible  in  all." 
Whether  the  phenomenon  in  question  took  place  artificially 
or  not  the  sentence  does  not  make  evident.  The  analogy 
would  be  very  defective  between  artificial  parthenogenesis 
due  to  the  combination  of  elements  by  a  scientific  expert 
after  long  experimentation,  and  the  virgin  birth  from  which 
all  laboratory  agency  was  excluded.  It  is  probably  natural 
parthenogenesis  the  orator  has  in  mind,  in  which  case  he 
but  escapes  one  difficulty  to  fall  into  a  greater.  Such  par- 
thenogenesis virtually  means  that  the  virgin  is  both  father 
and  mother  of  the  child.  The  natural  derivation  of  the  child 
is  manifestly  as  complete  on  this  hypothesis  as  if  there  had 
been  paternal  mediation.  But  such  explanation  does  violence 
to  the  narrative  which  refers  the  fatherly  origin  of  Jesus 

1  Matt.  6:  25-32,  especially  vs.  30. 


130   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

immediately  to  the  Holy  Spirit;  that  is,  the  explanation 
denies  the  fact  to  be  explained.  His  explanation  of  the 
miracle  supersedes  necessity  of  miracle,  destroying  its  evi- 
dential value.  How  can  natural  parthenogenesis  prove  the 
supernatural  genesis  of  Jesus  ?  And  this  leads  to  the  formu- 
lation of  the  decisive  objection  to  this  whole  point  of  view, 
namely,  in  order  to  save  the  fact  it  denies  the  principle,  or 
vice  versa.  Besides,  as  already  said,  its  naturalistic  expla- 
nation of  miracles  annuls  their  evidential  value  for  authority- 
religion. 

The  net  results  of  this  long  controversy  over  miracles 
may  now  be  gathered  up: 

(1)  Spinoza  fell  into  dogmatism  when  he  affirmed  the 
impossibility  of  miracles.'  Still,  to  the  scientific  under- 
standing of  the  world  and  to  the  intellectual  habitude  super- 
induced by  science,  a  miracle  cannot  be  admitted.  While  the 
scientist  may  confront  a  phenomenon  which  he  cannot  explain 
— that  is,  refer  to  its  non-miraculous  antecedents — yet  the 
decisive  consideration  is  that  he  can  never  discover  that  it  has 
no  such  antecedents.  For,  in  order  to  know  that  a  phenome- 
non is  inexplicable  accoi'ding  to  natural  laws,  he  must  know 
these  laws  altogether,  in  all  their  possible  combinations  and 
applications.  Hence  it  is  quite  as  dogmatic  to  affirm  the 
possibility  as  the  impossibility  of  miracle.  That  a  given  occur- 
rence was  miracle  could  be  authenticated  only  by  divine  reve- 
lation declaring  it  to  be  so.  How,  then,  could  miracle  attest 
revelation  ?  If  revelation  authenticates  miracle,  what  authen- 
ticates that  revelation  ?  Revelation  proving  the  miracle, 
miracle  proving  the  revelation — that  is,  that  something 
supernatural  has  been  revealed — -this  is  the  vicious  circle  in 

1  still,  even  today,  an  increasing  number  of  good  people  feel  painfully  the  dis- 
cord jarring  at  every  point  between  the  portentous  procession  of  miracles  attributed 
to  the  past,  and  the  ordinary  work-a-day  world  as  we  know  it.  To  them  it  seems  as 
if  the  benevolence  of  God  was  jeopardized  by  the  possibility  of  miracle;  otherwise, 
why  did  ho,  who  would  turn  water  into  wine  for  a  wedding  festival,  not  suspend  the 
nature  of  fire  to  burn  up  hundreds  of  little  children  at  the  Iroquois  Theater  dis- 
aster in  Chicago  ■? 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       131 

which  authority-religion  has  ever  revolved,  and  which  is  but 
aggravated  by  the  additional  consideration  that  it  views 
revelation  itself  as  miracle.' 

(2)  If  we  reject  the  hypothesis  of  myth  and  legend, 
Hume's  main  contention  has  never  been  answered.  Today 
we  witness  no  miracles.  Among  Protestants,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  very  small  number  of  fanatics,  even  the  most  ardent 
defenders  of  the  supernatural  no  longer  allow  that  miracles 
play  any  part  whatever  in  their  own  lives.  Catholic  ortho- 
doxy proceeds  in  this  matter  more  consistently  than  evan- 
gelical orthodoxy.  The  former  draws  no  limits  to  miracles, 
treats  the  present  as  the  past,  abides  by  the  standpoint  of  the 
Jews  of  whom  Paul  said  that  they  seek  after  a  sign.  But 
her  evangelical  sister  uncritically  and  strategically  limits 
miracles,  in  the  true  sense  of  that  word,  to  the  Bible. ^ 
According  to  her  opinion,  the  time  in  which  God  revealed 
himself  by  miracle  has  gone  by.  It  is  not  present  occur- 
rences, but  those  long  past,  by  means  of  which  she  erects  a 
wall  of  partition  between  belief  and  unbelief.  She  pays 
tribute  in  general  to  the  consciousness  of  our  time,  and 
judges  concerning  nature  and  history  as  the  modern  man  is 
wont  to  do.  But  she  exempts  one  region,  the  narratives  and 
teachings  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  from  this  judgment. 
Why  ?  The  Bible  is  the  Word  of  Grod,  she  says.  Here  is 
the  arch-miracle,  for  the  sake  of  which  faith  in  the  other 
miracles  is  exacted.  It  goes  without  saying  that  God's 
Word  cannot  be  doubted.  But  that  words  which  proceeded 
out  of  the  mouths  of  men  are  God's  words,  and  have  divine 

iThe  Catholic  church,  ou  deciding  what  revelation  is,  is  consistent  in  including 
in  that  decision  a  determination  of  what  is  and  what  is  not  miracle.  Nothing  may 
be  honored  as  miracle  which  is  not  sanctioned  as  such  by  apostolic  and  ordained 
authority. 

2  However  one  may  think  concerning  miracle,  it  is  impossible  for  historical 
science  to  believe  in  Christian  miracle  and  to  deny  the  non-Christian.  And  much  as 
one  may  find  something  supernatural  in  the  ethical  energies  of  the  inner  life,  there 
is  no  way  to  construe  the  mounting  of  the  Christian  above  the  temporal  and  the 
sensible  as  supernatural,  and  that  of  Plato  and  Epictetus  as  natural. 


132    The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Keligion 

infallibility — ah,  this  is  the  miracle,  its  base  and  apex  at 
once.  But  it  is  this  which  contradicts  all  the  rules  according 
to  which  we  estimate  otherwise  human  words  and  writings, 
and  requires  us  to  forego  independent  thought  precisely  at 
the  point  where  we  are  conscious  of  being  most  justified  and 
most  obligated  to  such  thought.  Now,  Hume  met  orthodoxy 
in  the  right  way  here.  Ancient  narratives,  construed  as 
descriptions  of  actual  occurrences,  tell  us  of  the  miraculously 
supernatural.  Is  the  tradition  reliable  ?  Was  the  eye- 
witness so  sharp  an  observer  that  we  must  assume  a  deviation 
from  the  laws  of  nature  rather  than  an  error  in  observation 
and  tradition  ?  This  question  is  legitimate,  and  Hume, 
prior  to  the  use  of  the  legendary  hypothesis,  answered  it  in 
the  right  way.  Miraculous  narratives,  like  the  biblical, 
originating  from  no  observer  who  possessed  sufficient  knowl- 
edge of  the  relations  and  laws  of  nature  to  have  a  right  to 
pronounce  upon  such  matters,  have  no  scientific  importance. 
And  the  orthodox  exaction  of  "faith"  in  stories  out  of  rela- 
tion with  everything  we  know  must  forever  be  no  less 
antagfonistic  to  the  hiofher  activities  of  true  faith  than  it  is 
stultifying  to  science  and  common-sense.  An  intelligent 
man  who  now  affirms  his  faith  in  such  stories  as  actual  facts 
can  hardly  know  what  intellectual  honesty  means. 

(3)  Not  simply  the  idea  of  testimony,  however,  but  the 
idea  of  God  and  of  nature,  which  underlies  miracles,  bears  the 
stamp  of  imperfection.  According  to  Paul,  as  well  as  modern 
thought,  God  is  not  only  all,  but  in  all.  But  in  that  case 
the  natural  order  is  not  distinct  from  the  divine  activity, 
does  not  run  a  separate  course,  is  not  something  by  itself. 
Each  must  be  the  same  in  principle — so  far  Spinoza  was 
right.  We  may  not  suppose  that  there  is  a  twofold  activity 
in  God,  a  natural  and  a  supernatural.  Rather,  natural  law 
is  itself  the  will  of  God ;  in  which  case  it  is  impossible  to  see 
how  God  beside  this  will  of  his  could  have  another  will,  how 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion        133 

anything  could  happen  which  did  not  happen  according  to 
law.  But  belief  in  the  miraculous  logically  implies  that  the 
natural  and  historical  order  is  not  so  constituted  that  all  of 
the  divine  ends  admit  of  being  attained  hereby,  God  finds 
resistance  to  be  overcome  in  his  own  moral  order.  As  Hoff- 
ding  says,  it  is  as  if  there  were  two  Gods,  the  one  operative 
in  the  customary  course  of  things,  the  other  correcting  in 
single  instances  the  work  of  the  first.'  At  all  events,  in  such 
belief  we  waver  hither  and  thither  between  God  and  nature; 
we  seek  the  help  of  God  only  as  a  stop-gap  on  occasions  when 
we  think  that  nature  cannot  serve  our  purpose,  and  the  result 
is  that  we  neither  feel  ourselves  at  home  in  nature  nor  are 
we  fully  at  peace  with  the  all-ruling  providence  of  God.^ 

It  is  customary  to  commend  faith  in  the  miraculous  as 
the  only  faith  that  is  in  a  position  to  give  God  the  honor 
which  is  his  due,  to  lay  hold  of  his  grace,  to  recognize  the 
glory  of  Christ,  to  appropriate  the  fruit  of  his  life  and  death, 
and,  amid  universal  uncertainty,  to  find  a  firm  rock  on  which 
one  may  securely  stand.  This  is  an  illusion.  The  opinion 
is  that,  because  such  faith  rendered  this  service  in  former 
times,  it  can  do  so  now  and  forever.  Really,  we  honor  God 
more  highly  when  we  take  the  thought  seriously  that  in 
nature  and  history  law  is  the  sole  and  perfect  revelation  of 
his  will,  than  when  we  seek  another  and  supposably  greater 
revelation  above  this  one.  For  the  ordinary  loses  in  signifi- 
cance when  we  set  the  exceptional  over  against  it,  and  we 
obstruct  our  understanding  of  the  true  greatness  of  God  when 
we  seek  to  see  it  in  a  few  strange  stars  of  the  night,  instead 
of  in  the  daily  sunshine  which  is  the  source  and  sustenance 
of  life.     What  we  need  in  order  to  see  the  glory  of  God  is 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  26. 

2  "In  reference  to  God  we  may  not  even  speak  of  possibility  which  is  not  at  the 
same  time  actuality.  God  does  what  he  does,  and  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  do  it  in 
any  other  way,  impossible  from  the  beginning  to  the  end." — Wimmee,  My  Struggle 
for  Light,  p.  28. 


134    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

not  miracle,  but  an  open  eye  for  the  world  in  which  we  live. 
And  our  deepest  needs  and  longings,  our  desire  for  reconcil- 
iation and  peace,  our  thirst  after  righteousness,  life,  and 
blessedness — these  find  their  satisfaction  more  surely  when 
we  hear  in  them  the  voice  of  Him  who  has  imbedded  them  in 
our  nature,  to  reveal  his  love  to  us,  than  when  we  seek  some 
guaranty  outside  of  us  that  we  dare  rely  on  him,  and  need  fear 
no  illusion.  So,  too,  a  human  Christ  who  does  no  more  and  no 
less  than  interpret  to  us  the  eternal  revelation  of  God  in  human 
nature,  and  opens  our  eyes  to  see  it,  is  no  less  adapted  to 
reconcile  us  and  lead  us  into  sonship  than  the  superhuman 
entity  of  the  church  which,  with  his  epiphany  and  his 
performances,  has  no  place  in  the  pale  of  the  natural  life  of 
humanity.  And  the  same  remark  may  be  made  of  a  human 
Christianity.  Christianity  is  not  miraculous  stories — no 
matter  how  many  nor  how  miraculous  they  may  be — but  the 
Spirit  of  Christ. 

(4)  And  so,  while  the  modern  man  abstains  from  denying 
the  possibility  of  miracles,  he  yet  does  not  believe  in  miracles, 
i.  e.,as  they  exist  and  function  in  authority-religion.'  Audit 
is  even  impossible  for  him  to  comprehend  how  a  Christian 
can  ascribe  more  worth  to  them  than  Jesus  himself  did,  especi- 
ally when  we  remember  that  Jesus  lived  in  a  time  when 
miracles  did  not  evoke  the  irresistible  objections  which  have 
banished  them  from  every  scientific  modern  mode  of  thought. 
Moreover,  the  modern  type  of  piety  resists  the  fancy  that  a 
Christian  of  the  twentieth  century  can  receive  any  sort  of 
religious  or  moral  benefit  from  the  fact  that  Jesus  multiplied 
the  loaves  or  miraculously  knew  that  a  piece  of  money  was 
in  the  mouth  of  a  fish.  But — though  I  anticipate  in  saying 
so   in    this    connection — while    we  do    not   believe    in  this 

iBy  "religious  miracles"  the  Ritschlians  mean  single  events — within  the 
divinely  guided  total  process— which  are  especially  important  and  clear,  perhaps 
also  specially  striking  and  powerful,  disclosures  of  God's  reign  redemptively  and 
providentially,  no  matter  whether  they  be  naturally  mediated  or  not.  This  is  cor- 
rectly thought  out,  and  has  no  connection  with  the  metaphysical  miracle  in  the 
system  of  authority-religion  under  criticism. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion        135 

antiquated  and  obsolete  form  of  an  anthropomorphic  theol- 
ogy, we  yet  do  believe  steadfastly  in  the  activity  of  God  in 
us  and  around  us  and  above  us ;  we  do  believe  in  his  help  con- 
formably to  the  order  which  he  has  established  in  the  moral 
world;  and  we  so  believe,  not  on  the  basis  of  any  external 
authority  whatsoever,  but  on  the  basis  of  our  own  moral 
experience,  which  has  taught  us  that  honest,  heartfelt  prayer, 
and  the  mounting  upward  of  heart  and  conscience  to  God, 
providentially  result  in  unspeakable  blessings,  in  true  out- 
pourings of  Spirit,  of  moral  energy,  of  pardon,  of  comfort,  of 
faith,  and  of  hope. 

(5)  While  war  has  long  been  waged  against  miracle ;  while 
in  the  consciousness  of  humanity  faith  in  miracle  has  been 
increasingly  shaken;  while  miracle  has  come  to  be  a  burden 
instead  of  a  support  to  religion,  it  is  yet  still  true  that  it  is 
more  difficult  for  Christianity  to  detach  itself  from  miracle 
than  it  is  for  any  other  religion  whatsoever.  This  is  mainly 
because  the  doctrine  of  the  bodily  resurrection  of  Jesus  has, 
been  propagated  into  the  very  center  of  Christian  conviction,, 
has  so  fixed  its  stamp  upon  this  religion  that  the  latter  seems, 
to  many  to  stand  or  fall  with  the  historicity  of  that  event. 
"If  Christ  be  not  risen,  our  faith  is  vain,  we  are  yet  in  our 
sins,"  writes  Paul.  Is  it  not  well  to  ask  ourselves  whether 
we  are  in  a  position  to  participate  experientially  in  this 
Pauline  proposition  ?  We  are  dependent  upon  the  narratives 
of  the  gospels  and  the  witness  of  Paul,  to  form  an  idea  of 
what  occurred  after  the  death  of  Jesus.  But  these  are  by  no 
means  so  consistent  as  to  render  assent  to  the  actuality  of  the 
occurrences  a  requirement  of  conscience.  This  importance 
attached  to  the  bodily  resurrection  is  far  out  of  proportion 
to  the  evidence  therefor.'     The  narratives  yield  a  fluctuating 

1  "I  quite  recognize  for  myself  that  the  story  of  his  [Christ's]  physical  resurrec- 
tion has  been  believed  on  for  less  evidence  than  in  this  age  would  be  required  for  the 

establishment  of  identity  where  the  value  of  five  pounds  might  be  in  question." 

J.  Allanson  Picton,  The  Religion  of  the  Universe,  p.  215. 


136    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

image  which  eludes  all  assured  evaluation.  Shall  we  base 
our  highest  and  holiest,  our  whole  religious  life,  on  an  occur- 
rence of  which  no  one  can  make  a  perfectly  distinct  picture  ? 
And  is  it,  indeed,  necessary  that  we  build  our  salvation 
on  this  occurrence?  Is  there  no  other  foundation  of  salva- 
tion? Are  not  the  truths  of  our  faith,  God's  love  and  grace, 
his  commandments  and  kingdom,  reliable  in  and  of  them- 
selves ?  Do  they  need  a  visible  authentication  ?  Are  we  not 
children  of  God  if  we  say  with  love  and  confidence,  Abba 
Father?  Do  we  not  have  forgiveness  of  our  sins  if  we  are 
penitent,  and  believingly  seek  his  grace?  Is  Jesus  not  our 
reconciler  if  his  Spirit  dwells  in  us  and  fills  us  with  the  peace 
of  God?  Is  our  faith  in  eternal  life  vain  and  baseless  if 
Jesus  be  not  bodily  risen,  and  did  not  show  himself  for  a 
certain  length  of  time  to  his  disciples?  What  of  Old  Testa- 
ment worthies  who  of  course  did  not  believe  in  the  bodily 
resurrection  of  Jesus?  Of  John  the  Baptist?  No,  no:  we 
are  not  required  to  base  all  this  on  an  occurrence  which  admits 
of  so  diverse  appreciation,  both  as  to  its  documentariness  and 
as  to  its  nature.  Our  faith  rests  on  a  different  foundation, 
and  we  need  not  fear  its  collapse  if  an  idea  which,  in  initial 
Christianity,  became  the  means  of  its  historical  unfolding, 
proves  to  be  transitory  and  alien  to  the  essentials  of  Chris- 
tianity. We  can  imperturbably  leave  unanswered  the  question 
as  to  what  really  took  place  on  Easter  morn,  and  as  to  how  the 
disciples  came  by  their  conviction  that  Jesus  was  risen,  and 
we  can  treat  the  biblical  narratives  in  question  like  other 
miraculous  narratives.  Jesus  is  the  Living  One,  no  matter 
whether  he  appeared  corporeally  to  his  disciples  or  not.  He 
lives  and  rules  in  the  world  through  his  Spirit.  Our  convic- 
tion that  this  is  true  must  ever  be  a  matter  of  "faith  and  not 
of  sight." 

This  matter  is  of  so  serious  importance  to  many  good 
people  that  I  venture  to  restate  my  position  from  a  slightly 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       137 

different  angle  of  vision.  The  bodily  resurrection  is  a  fact 
which  can  or  cannot  be  maintained  by  historical  science. 
Any  such  fact  is  to  be  proved  in  the  scientific  way  that  other 
facts  are  proved,  or  else  it  is  not  to  be  proved,  as  science 
counts  proof,  at  all.  If  it  is  to  be  proved,  it  is  to  be  proved 
to  everyone — the  most  unbelieving;  a  scientific  pagan,  for 
instance.  And  the  attitude  to  the  fact  is  independent  of  all 
personal  disposition,  Christian  or  non-Christian,  good  or  bad. 
If  the  fact  is  not  proved — and  not  convincingly  proved — to 
the  scientific  intellect  and  conscience,  religion  can  never  make 
it  a  duty  to  let  that  pass  as  proved  which  has  not  been  in  truth 
proved;  can  never  make  it  a  duty  to  proceed  less  critically, 
less  conscientiously,  in  so  cardinal  a  matter.  In  other  words : 
The  acknowledgment  of  a  single  historical  fact  is  a  thing  of 
knowledge  and  not  of  faith.  Faith — let  this  not  be  forgot- 
ten— is  directed  only  to  that  which  is  of  a  timeless  charac- 
ter, which  can  disclose  itself  as  immediately  present  to  any- 
one anywhere.  Whoever  substitutes  an  historical  fact  for 
such  object  of  faith  externalizes  faith,  holds  religion  down  to 
a  stage  which  has  been  overcome  in  the  world-historical 
movement,  and  complicates  religion  in  insoluble  contradic- 
tion with  all  the  rest  of  our  life.  Faith  in  the  divine  truth 
of  Christianity  is  not  founded  on  the  bodily  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  as  is  the  case  in  authority-religion,  but  on  its  new 
content,  the  world  of  love  and  grace.  Is  it  retorted  that  this 
world  is  a  mere  subjective  web,  an  illusion,  if  it  be  not 
authenticated  by  the  tangible  support  of  a  corporeal  resurrec- 
tion? But  what  is  this  but  to  fall  back  upon  the  stage  of 
mediaeval  Catholicism,  and  make  the  reality  of  the  spiritual 
dependent  upon  sensible  embodiment?  What  is  this  obsti- 
nate affirmation  of  historical  faith  but  a  confession  of  unfaith 
in  the  omnipresence  of  the  spiritual  and  divine  life — the 
advocacy  of  a  religion  of  "signs  and  wonders"  at  the  expense 
of  a  religion  of  Spirit  and  personality?     If  one  will  not  do 


138    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

this,  let  him  cease  the  amalgamation  of  history  and  faith 
which  has  brought  such  unspeakable  bewilderment  and  woe 
upon  modern  humanity! 

(6)  "Das  Wunder  ist  des  Glaubens  liebstes  Kind." 
Goethe  was  right.  Miracle  is  faith's  dearest  child,  that  is, 
product.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  it  is  characteristic  of  authority- 
religion  to  treat  that  as  cause  which  is  primarily  effect.  It 
is  often  said  concerning  the  miraculous  narratives  of  the 
Bible  that  they  narrate  what  actually  took  place,  or  else  they 
are  lies  and  those  who  wrote  them  liars.  Are  these  the  only 
two  possibilities  ?  It  would  be  far  nearer  the  truth,  far  more 
indicative  of  historical  sense  and  religious  insight — -of  some 
remove,  on  the  part  of  him  who  so  judges,  from  the  coarse 
vulgarity  and  stupidity  of  a  Wordsworth's  Peter  Bell — to 
say  that,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  a  miraculous  story  can- 
not be  a  lie  nor  its  source  mendacious.  Certainly,  apart 
from  the  alternative,  reality  or  lie,  there  is  a  third,  which  is 
neither  of  the  two,  i.  c,  poesy.  No  one  judges  the  parablea 
of  Jesus,  e.  g.,  according  to  the  principle  that  they  are 
actual  or  mendacious  accounts.  One  sees  in  them,  not 
reality,  but  truth — truth  in  pictures.  This  is  the  essence  of 
poesy,  and  everyone  knows  that  it  is  precisely  poesy  that  is 
able  to  express  the  highest  truths.'  Thus,  also,  do  we  most 
honor  biblical  miraculous  narratives  when  we  seek  to  under- 
stand them  as  poesies.  So  when  we  speak  of  faith,  when  we 
confess  faith,  we  do  not,  just  on  that  account,  speak  the 
language  of  knowledge  as  science  counts  knowledge;  for  such 

1  "  What's  this,  Aurora  Leigh, 

You  write  so  of  the  poets,  and  not  laugh? 
Those  virtuous  liars,  dreamers  after  dark, 
Exaggerators  of  the  sun  and  moon, 
And  soothsayers  in  a  tea-cup?" 

"I  write  so 
Of  the  only  truth-tellers  now  left  to  God, 
The  only  speakers  of  essential  truth. 
Opposed  to  relative,  comparative. 
And  temporal  truths." 

— E.  B.  Browning,  in  Aurora  Leigh. 


Dissolution  of  Authoeity-Keligion        139 

knowledge  leaves  no  room  for  the  subjective,  the  human,  the 
personal ;  nor  do  we  speak  the  language  of  the  market,  where 
the  petty  individual  interests  of  men  crowd  and  clash;  but 
we  speak  another,  a  marvelously  living  language,  the  divine 
language  of  Eternity — the  language  of  poesy.  Confession 
of  faith  is  poesy  of  faith!  And  in  this  poesy  of  faith  the 
human  spirit  finds  its  fullest  freedom,  and  at  the  same  time 
a  bond  of  fellowship  which  embraces  all  that  is  human;  in 
this  poesy  the  most  distant  is  present;  the  past,  the  dead, 
is  living.  What  the  philosopher,  who  sought  his  formula  in 
other  centuries  and  in  a  foreign  language,  has  excogitated,  in 
order  to  explain  the  world  to  knowledge,  the  critic  of  knowl- 
edge independently  accepts  or  rejects.  But  what  the  collect- 
ive spirit  of  a  people  has  grown,  what  the  saint  has  sung, 
be  it  never  so  remote  from  us,  echoes  in  our  hearts  today, 
awakens  in  their  depths  a  life  of  their  own,  as  if  we  had 
participated  in  the  old  production  and  the  old  song.  To  me 
it  would  be  a  hard,  insufferable  yoke  of  the  letter,  because 
reason  and  conscience  alike  rebel  against  it,  were  I  required 
to  confess  that  Jesus  stilled  the  storm  on  the  sea  with  a 
word,  or  that  he  walked  on  the  surface  of  the  water  with- 
out sinking.  But  then  this  would  be  no  confession  of  faith 
at  all — a  consideration  to  which,  strangely  enough,  our 
church  leaders  are  blind;  it  would  be  historical  knowledge, 
actual  or  supposed.  If  we  are  to>  derive  a  real  confession 
of  faith  from  these  narratives,  we  must  interpret  them  as 
poesies  of  faith  in  which  the  human  heart  has  embodied  or 
symbolized  its  faith  in  the  peace-producing  power  of  the 
Spirit  of  Christ,  its  confidence  in  that  courage  of  faith 
which  mounts  over  all  the  abysses  of  life.  And  we  discover 
the  language  of  our  own  faith  in  these  poesies  of  faith, 
the  language  of  the  heart,  which  proclaims  the  divine 
in  the  pictures  and  parables  of  the  human.  How  harshly 
spirits   pounce  upon  one  another  when  they  argue  over  the 


140   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

story  of  creation,  or  of  the  birth,  resurrection,  and  ascension 
of  Jesus!  But  when  Father  Haydn  confesses  his  pious 
faith,  and  his  song  of  creation  soars  and  swings,  then  they 
all  sing  with  their  hearts:  "The  heavens  declare  the  glory 
of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth  his  handiwork."  And 
when  our  children  sing 

"  In  the  beauty  of  the  lilies 
Christ  was  bom  across  the  sea," 

or  when  the  Hallelujah  shouts  the  victory  over  death  and  the 
grave — it  is  our  own  hearts'  faith  which  cries  Amen!  to 
what  the  devout  genius  has  confessed  in  his  faith.  Then  we 
no  longer  believe  as  Catholic  or  Protestant,  as  orthodox  or 
liberal,  as  old  or  new;  we  believe  as  human,  and  speak  and 
hear  the  language  of  the  Eternal  Humanity. 

It  but  remains  to  indicate  in  compact  summary  the  sig- 
nificance of  this  movement  of  logical  criticism  consum- 
mated mainly  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  religion  of 
authority,  basing  its  claim  to  finality  upon  the  idea  that  it  is 
divine  and  that  no  other  is,  proves  its  divineness  by  appeal 
to  the  form  of  the  origin  of  its  religious  truths.  The  argu- 
ment of  its  orthodox  supernaturalistic  apologetics  runs  as 
follows:  Sharing,  to  start  with,  in  the  old  world-view  that 
the  intellect  has  primacy  in  human  nature,  and  knowledge  in 
religion,  it  affirms  that  man  was  originally  endowed,  when 
miraculously  created  by  omnipotent  fiat,  with  a  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  God.  But  man  lost  this  light  of  knowledge  through 
the  darkness  of  the  sin  of  the  great  fall.  But,  for  all  that, 
there  yet  remained  the  original  and  basal  impulse  toward 
God,  and  the  postulate  of  a  proffer  once  yet  again  of  the 
divine  truth  in  its  completeness.  This,  however,  does  not 
hinder  all  that  is  human  from  remaining  subjective,  fallible, 
sinful,  and  weak.  Therefore  man  needs  the  help  that  comes 
only  from  superhuman  divine  power.     This  proffered  help  is 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       141 

known  as  divine — here  is  the  crux  of  that  old  argument  — 
directly  in  its  form,  which  has  no  analogy  ivith  the  way  that 
human  things  come  about.  In  addition,  this  help,  in  its  con- 
tent and  effect  as  well,  proclaims  itself  to  be  divine,  in  the 
last  analysis,  by  manifest  interruption  of  the  psychic  legality 
of  human  life.  The  miracle,  in  the  heart  of  nature  and  of 
history,  of  the  supernatural  and  superhistorical  origin  and 
beginning  of  Christianity,  and  the  ever-recurring  miracle  of 
conversion — now  erected  into  signal  demonstrative  value,  to 
be  examined  in  a  moment — assure  the  specialty  of  this 
causality,  and  authenticate  the  proffered  help  of  a  Truth  and 
Power  of  God  fundamentally  exempt  from  all  human  fallibil- 
ity and  weakness.  The  reference  of  Christianity  to  the 
absolute  causality  of  God,  and  the  consequent  demarkation 
against  all  that  is  human  and  historical,  against  the  merely 
relative  truths  and  forces  of  the  latter,  exhaust  the  require- 
ment of  finality  on  the  part  of  the  religion  of  authority. 
Let  it  be  repeated  that  the  gist  of  the  argument  for  this 
finality  on  the  part  of  orthodox  supernaturalism  is  the  use  it 
makes  of  the  category  of  causality.  Christianity  is  directly 
due  to  the  miraculous  causality  of  God,  and  nothing  else  is. 
Hence,  revelation  by  direct  and  exclusive  supernatural  com- 
munication of  ideas,  and  the  Bible  by  exclusive  miraculous 
inspiration,  and  conversion  by  "miracle  of  grace."  Strictly 
speaking,  revelation  has  no  history,  the  Bible  no  history, 
and  conversion  no  psychology.  In  a  static  world  they  are 
themselves  static.  Isolated,  incomparable,  disparate,  refer- 
able to  divine  miracle  as  their  cause,  they  constitute  the 
finality  of  the  Christian  religion. 

But  how  may  one  know  that  these  phenomena  are  imme- 
diate effects  of  such  miraculous  divine  causality?  What 
is  the  proof  of  it?  Now,  it  is  precisely  the  knowledge  and 
proof  of  this  old  apologetic  which  have  been  irretrievably 
undermined,  as  this  chapter  has  shown,  mainly  by  the  ration- 


142    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

alistic  criticism  of  that  all-destroying  eighteenth  century. 
However  little  religious  value  rationalism  may  have — and 
the  writer  does  not  think  that  it  is  very  great — -it  yet  has 
the  merit  of  working  as  a  disintegrating  solvent  upon  the 
static  finalities  of  the  church,  whose  survivals  are  an  irritat- 
ing and  injurious  anachronism  in  this  modern  world. ^ 

Today  this  issue  of  rationalism  is  being  unintentionally 
and  collaterally  duplicated  by  historical  science.  But 
since  it  is  historical  science  which  seems  to  exclude  the 
possibility  of  establishing  from  any  point  of  view  the 
finality  of  the  Christian  religion,  thus  setting  our  own 
task,  an  examination  of  its  merits  had  better  be  post- 
poned for  the  more  positive  part  of  this  work.  Still,  brief 
reference  to  its  effects  upon  orthodox  finalities  is  desirable 
here,  all  the  more  so  since  its  conclusions  did  not  escape 
recognition  in  the  previous  part  of  this  chapter. 

As  will  be  seen  later,  the  new  view  of  the  world  in  general 
includes  a  remainderless  historical  treatment  of  all  human 
things,  which  is  the  outcome  of  the  widening  of  the  horizon 
backward  into  the  past  and  sideward  over  the  entire  breadth 
of  the  present.  It  is  this  movement  which  has  contributed 
to  the  shattering  of  the  original  naive  confidence  of  every 
regnant  type  of  culture  and  system  of  values  in  their  own 
inviolability.  These  types  have  become  historical  objects 
by  the  side  of  others,  between  which  not  miracle,  but  only 
comparison,  can  yield  criterion  of  their  respective  values. 
Thus  it  would  seem  that  modern  history  was  the  end  of  any 
dogmatic  formation  which  hypostasizes  its  naive  claim  to 
validity  by  the  use  of  the  concept  "revelation."  On  the 
basis  of  developmental  history  of  peoples,  civilizations,  and 
constituents  of  culture,  a  history  founded  upon  critical  analy- 
sis   of   sources    and    psychological    inferences    of   analogy, 

1  The  main  defect  of  rationalism  is  not  so  much  that  it  is  unhistorical,  as  is  often 
asserted  with  so  little  insight,  but  that  it  is  iutellectualistic,  thus  sharing  in  the 
presupposition  of  orthodoxy. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       143 

historical  science  resolves  all  dogmas,  civil  and  ecclesiasti- 
cal, into  the  flux  of  process,  judges  all  phenomena  with 
sympathetic  righteousness,  articulates  and  unifies  all  that 
happens  in  the  long  human  story  into  a  general  view  of  the 
becoming  of  humanity.  This  picture  of  the  whole,  con- 
structed in  part  by  the  synoptic  imagination,  is  the  presup- 
position of  all  judgments  concerning  the  norms  and  ideals  of 
humanity.  Therefore  historical  science  is  the  basis  of  all 
thought  concerning  values  and  norms,  the  means  of  self- 
reflection  on  the  part  of  mankind,  as  regards  its  nature,  its 
origin,  and  its  hopes. 

It  is  impossible  that  this  new  way  of  looking  at  things 
should  not  profoundly  affect  all  future  "appreciations"  of 
Christianity.  Like  all  great  movements  of  the  human  spirit, 
Christianity  also  shares  this  naive  confidence  in  its  normative 
truth,  and  apologetic  reflection  has  ever  solidified  this  confi- 
dence by  the  blank  unmediated  opposition  of  Christianity 
to  all  that  is  non-Christian,  depreciating  the  latter  to  a 
homogeneous  mass  of  human  error  and  vice;  exalting  the 
former  to  immediate  divine  dignity,  accredited  as  such  by 
outer  and  inner  miracle,  as  we  have  already  seen.  All  that 
is  Christian  is  held  to  be  in  history,  but  not  of  history,  not 
even  through  history.  "Secular"  history  is  the  region  of 
sin  and  error,  but  ecclesiastical  history  presents  absolute 
truth,  proved  to  be  such  because  miraculously  authenticated 
to  be  due  to  divine  communication.  This,  we  saw,  was  the 
old  position. 

Now,  it  is  not  only  rationalism,  but  modern  historical 
science,  arising  from  rationalism  and  continuous  therewith, 
which  has  unconsciously  wrought  in  a  disintegrating  way 
upon  this  structure  of  thought  built  by  the  apologetics  of 
orthodox  supernaturalism.  The  articulation  of  Christianity, 
without  remainder,  as  an  individual  phenomenon,  into  the 
course  of  other  great  individual  productions,  especially  into 


144   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

the  universal  organism  of  religious  history,  goes  triumphantly 
on.  By  so  much  do  the  orthodox-apologetic  isolation  of 
Christianity  over  against  the  rest  of  historical  reality,  and 
the  specification  of  this  isolatedness  as  formal  characteristic 
of  its  finality,  suffer  refutation.  In  a  word,  Christianity  is 
drawn  into  the  process  which  relativizes  all  that  is  historical, 
and  hence  the  static  finality  given  it  by  authority-religion  is 
gone.  Whether  any  conception  of  Christian  finality  is  pos- 
sible, or  even  pertinent,  in  the  light  of  universal  historical 
relativity  is  precisely  the  problem  for  our  further  reflection. 

One  thing  more,  and  this  long  chapter  shall  close.  While 
one  cannot  attend  to  all  the  modifications  of  orthodoxy  in 
modern  times — and  one  need  not  do  so,  since  at  root  they 
are  the  same — there  is  yet  a  single  endeavor  and  tendency 
that  deserves  to  be  signalized  by  special  mention.  I  refer 
to  the  development  of  thought  formerly  represented  by 
Frank,^  now  by  his  pupil  and  disciple,  Ihmels."  While 
orthodox  Protestantism  rests  its  case  upon  the  miraculous 
causation  of  biblical  Christianity,  and  orthodox  Catholicism 
upon  that  of  ecclesiastical  Christianity  in  addition,  thus  both 
in  common  upon  an  outer  miracle  in  history,  the  Frankian 
orthodoxy  appeals  in  a  singular  way  to  the  inner  miracle  of 
conversion.  In  the  experience  of  conversion  or  regeneration, 
all  objective  realities  of  faith  are  authenticated  to  the  Chris- 
tian. This  experience  is  the  specific  peculiarity  which  serves 
better  to  isolate  and  thus  absolutize  Christianity  than  the 
traditional  marks  of  its  isolatedness. 

It  will  be  observed  that  this  modern  form  of  orthodox- 
supernaturalistic  apologetics  pays  tribute  likewise  to  ration- 
alism and  historical  science,  since  it  subordinates  the  outer 
miracle  to  the  inner,  and  assigns  to  the  latter  only  the 
function  of  guaranteeing  the  absolute  certainty  of  redemption. 

'i^  System  of  Christian  Certainty. 

iDie  chrisfliche  Wahrheitsgewissheit,  ihr  letzer  Grund  und  ihre  Entstehung 
(1901);  Die  SelbstCindigkeit  der  Dogmatik  gegeiiUber  der  Beligionsphilosophie  (1901). 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       145 

The  significance  of  this  standpoint  is  the  relegation  of  super- 
natural authentication  to  psychological  immanent  factors. 
It  is  claimed  that  on  the  basis  of  these  factors  the  transeunt 
factors  of  a  metaphysical  and  historical  nature — namely,  the 
miraculous  work  of  God  on  innately  sinful  man,  and  the 
miraculous  revelation  of  "redemptive  facts"  authenticating 
themselves  in  the  Bible — are  to  be  reached.  Any  outer 
miracle,  not  unconditionally  necessary  to  the  affirmation  and 
validation  of  this  inner  miracle  of  conversion,  may  be  sac- 
rificed upon  the  altar  of  historical  science.  Common  to  the 
old  and  the  new  orthodoxy — as,  indeed,  to  all  theology  —  is 
the  endeavor  to  substantiate  the  normative  validity  of  Chris- 
tian truth.  Common  to  the  two  again  is  the  method  of 
arriving  at  this  normative  validity  by  means  of  a  principiant 
isolation  or  singularity  of  Christianity.  The  difPerence 
between  the  two  is  that  this  exceptionalness  of  Christianity 
with  the  old  is  historical,  but  with  the  new  is  psychological. 
But  in  each  case  the  special  mark  is  this  unrelatedness, 
together  with  the  causal  miracle  by  which  it  is  validated; 
only,  for  the  Frankian  form  of  the  orthodox  apologetics,  the 
miracle  (of  conversion)  is  psychological  and  immanent, 
effected  on  the  basis  of  the  Bible  and  authenticating  the 
divine  origin  of  the  Bible. 

It  is  evident  that  the  considerations  which  cast  doubt 
upon  miracles  in  general,  and  which  have  already  been  mar- 
shaled, lose  none  of  their  weight  when  urged  against  this  new 
position.  Besides,  no  abstract  impossibility  of  a  strict  denial 
of  miracle  can  nullify  the  relative  and  limited  character  of 
the  history  of  the  genesis  of  Christianity,  as  exhibited  by  the 
new  history  and  the  old  rationalism.  But  what  is  thus  true 
with  reference  to  the  external  is  true  also  for  the  internal  of 
this  new  method  of  immanence.  If  the  historical  reality, 
said  to  be  effect  of  which  God  is  direct  cause,  is  partly  char- 
acterized by  error  and  evil,  so  similarly  is  it  true  of  the  psy- 


l-tG   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 


chological  reality  in  which  error  and  sin  are  still  manifest. 
As  historical  science  is  articulating  biblical  Christianity  into 
the  pre-biblical  and  the  extra-biblical,  that  is,  relativizing 
Christianity,  so  psychological  science  articulates  the  phe- 
nomenon of  conversion,  hitherto  interpreted  as  miracle,  into 
antecedent  psychic  experiences,  thereby  relativizing  it.  It 
goes  without  saying  that  the  orderliness  of  conversion  as 
aerainst  its  miraculousness  neither  discredits  the  fact  nor  dis- 
parages  its  value,  despite  its  need  of  a  different  explanation 
from  that  of  miracle,  and  its  failure  to  serve  the  Frankian 
argument.  Besides,  as  fixedness  and  cataclysm,  necessary 
correlatives  in  the  old  view  of  the  world  which  reacted  in 
human  consciousness  to  reproduce  themselves  in  experience 
there,  more  and  more  yield  to  the  becoming  and  order  of  the 
new  world-view,  which  will  likewise  react  in  human  experience 
to  mirror  themselves  there,  that  old  apparent  discontinuity 
in  the  human  moral  consciousness,  naturally  interpreted  by 
the  old  faith  as  the  "miracle  of  conversion,"  will  also  give 
way  to  a  more  continuous  and  healthy  religious  development, 
to  be  interpreted  by  the  new  faith  from  the  point  of  view  of 
order  and  not  of  miracle.  The  familiar  consideration  may  be 
added  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  reflection  cannot  pass  imme- 
diately from  a  finite  effect  to  an  infinite  cause.  It  need  only 
be  added  that  the  valuation  of  what  is  called  conversion  by 
complacently  referring  it  to  the  miraculous  causality  of  God, 
thus  referring  it  to  what  it  came  from,  instead  of  valuing  it 
by  what  it  leads  to — roots  instead  of  fruits — has  inflicted 
sufficient  injury  upon  personal  and  ecclesiastical  life  to  con- 
vince the  most  desperate  apologist  that  this  line  of  argument 
does  not  serve  the  religious  interest,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
scientific.  It  is  true  of  "conversion,"  as  of  everything  else, 
that  "things  are  what  they  are"  and  not  what  they  come 
from.  And  if  by  anticipation  the  reader  has  caught  the 
suggestion  that  the  dignity  of  things,  even  Christian  things. 


Dissolution  of  Authority-Religion       147 

is  disclosed,  not  in  their  cause,  but  in  tlieir  end;  not  in  the 
form  of  their  origin,  but  in  the  worth  of  their  content;  not  in 
their  structure,  but  in  their  function;  not  in  their  credentials, 
but  in  their  service — then  he  has  already  entered  upon  a  more 
excellent  way  than  any  religion  of  authority  has  ever  known,  k 
Then,  too,  has  he  exchanged  the  world  of  Thomas  Aquinas 
for  that  of  Kant  and  Lotze  and  Charles  Darwin.  In  this 
new  world  there  is  no  room  for  the  theory  or  Christianity's 
exclusive  supernaturalness,  over  against  which  all  besides  is 
not  God's  work,  but  man's ;  for  in  this  new  world  the  opposi- 
tion of  human  and  divine  is  overcome,  and  all  is  human  and 
all  is  divine  at  one  and  the  same  time. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  CHANGED  VIEW  OF  THE  WORLD  AND  OF  LIFE 

On  February  17,  1900,  Rome  witnessed  a  concourse  of 
men  such  as  the  great  city  on  the  Tiber,  accustomed  as  it 
has  been  to  imposing  spectacles  throughout  its  history,  has 
rarely  ever  seen.  But  this  time  the  crowd  had  not  gathered 
to  greet  a  triumphant  Csesar  at  the  head  of  his  victorious 
legions,  nor  yet  to  gaze  at  the  vicegerent  of  God  on  earth 
in  the  pomp  of  clerical  retinue.  These  men  had  come  from 
the  ends  of  the  earth  to  do  honor  to  a  poor  wandering 
knight  of  the  spirit,  who,  after  eight  years'  imprisonment  in 
a  dungeon,  suffered  death  at  the  stake — had  come,  that  is, 
to  unveil  a  monument  in  memory  of  Giordano  Bruno  on  the 
very  spot  where,  three  hundred  years  before,  a  tumultuous 
and  checkered  human  life  ended  on  a  pile  of  fagots.  Why 
did  the  nineteenth  century,  just  before  closing  its  doors, 
think  that  it  must  pay  precisely  this  man  a  homage  so  pure 
and  so  enthusiastic  ?  There  have  been  deeper  and  clearer 
thinkers,  rounder  and  riper  characters,  than  the  martyr- 
philosopher  whose  form  was  tossed  up  and  down  by  the  waves 
of  the  great  popular  movement  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
To  be  sure,  it  was  a  right  brave  word  which  he,  the  judged, 
flung  in  the  face  of  his  judges:  "You  pronounce  the  sentence 
with  greater  fear  than  I  receive  it,  perhaps."  But  such 
bravery  is  not  so  rare ;  it  fills  the  breasts  of  countless  men 
and  women  whose  crosses  and  pyres  the  history  of  the  world 
passes  by  without  even  naming  their  names.  Or  was  the 
name  of  Giordano  Bruno  to  furnish  the  watchword  in  the 
great  battle  of  the  spirit  against  that  power  which  ever 
preaches  a  relentless  crusade  against  any  stirring  of  a  free 
humanity?     Was  the  monument  at  that  place  of  execution 

148 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  149 

to  be  a  witness  of  the  faith  that  the  glow  of  the  spirit  cannot 
be  stifled  by  the  heat  of  fire?  All  this  may  have  contributed 
to  the  surprising  resurrection  of  the  memory  of  an  almost 
forgotten  man.  Still,  the  main  thing  was  Giordano  Bruno's 
type  of  mind,  or  attitude  of  spirit,  which  made  him  the 
herald  of  a  new  time  that  only  the  closing  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  in  a  position  to  understand  and  appreciate.  The 
picture  of  nature  of  the  new  time,  whose  outline  science 
sketched  at  first  with  sober  sense  and  cool  intellect,  was 
painted  by  Bruno  in  shining  colors,  presageful  of  a  time 
when  this  picture  of  nature  would  satisfy,  not  only  the  head 
of  the  thinker,  but  also  the  fantasy  of  the  poet ;  nay,  reawaken 
in  the  heart  of  man  pious  faith,  worship,  holy  revelations. 
How  long  and  how  thoroughly  this  new  picture  of  the  world 
could  render  such  service  we  have  yet  to  see. 

According  to  our  plan,  we  shall  now  briefly  outline  this 
new  thought  of  life  and  the  world  in  its  bearing  upon  our 
problem.  But  before  we  take  up  the  conception  on  account 
of  wdiich  Giordano  Bruno  suffered  his  martyr's  death — the 
conception  of  the  boundlessness  of  the  world — certain  aspects 
of  the  development  which  prepared  the  way  therefor  should 
engage  our  attention. 

It  would  seem  as  if  continuity  with  humanistic  antiquity 
was  never  entirely  broken. 

Under  the  auspices  of  the  Byzantine  government,  which  survived 
the  ruin  of  the  ancient  world,  the  Hellenic  peninsula  preserved,  in 
antiquated  and  pedantic  form,  the  literary  and  philosophical  tradi- 
tions of  antiquity,  its  taste  for  classical  learning,  and  its  love  for 
the  great  philosophers,  Plato  and  Aristotle.  Here  the  writings  of 
these  thinkers  were  studied  in  the  original  at  a  time  when  Greek 
was  not  only  a  dead  language,  but  absolutely  unknown  in  the 
Occident.' 

Italy  was  in  close  contact  with  Greece.  Greek  scholars 
flocked  to  Italy  in  great  numbers,  causing  a  veritable  migra- 

1  Weber,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  262. 


150   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

tion  from  the  Orient,  when  Byzantium  and  the  last  remains 
of  the  Eastern  Empire  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Turks 
(1453).  This  event  raised  Italy  to  the  position  which  she 
had  occupied  in  literature,  art,  and  philosophy  two  thousand 
years  before.  Thus  it  was  in  Italy  that  the  connection  with 
antiquity  was  preserved,  in  consequence  of  which  Italy 
became  the  birthplace  of  the  "modern  man"  and  the  cradle 
of  "modern  thought." 

Along  with  the  immediate  relation  of  Italy  to  the  great- 
ness of  earlier  times,  a  leading  capacity  for  her  vocation  was 
due  to  the  favorable  course  which  her  own  history  took  at 
the  outg^oinoj  of  the  Middle  Acres.  The  decentralization 
which  is  the  precondition  of  free  development  had  struck 
root  most  of  all  directly  in  Italy.  The  self-dependence  of 
single  cities  was  the  natural  occasion  for  the  pronounced 
formation  of  local  peculiarities,  which  survive  in  the  great 
cities  of  Italy  to  the  present  day.  These  urban  peculiarities 
were  possible  only  through  political  self-dependence,  and 
through  the  liveliness  of  the  passionate  struggle  of  existence 
by  which  the  cities  were  protected.  What  was  true  of  the 
cities  was  true  of  individuals  within  the  cities.  The 
violence  of  party  conflicts,  the  republican  necessity  to  take 
part  in  them,  the  importance  which,  in  eternal  alternations, 
attaches  to  the  fortunes  of  a  powerful  personality — all  this 
was  a  school  of  character  from  which  independent  individuals, 
conscious  of  their  independence,  must  emerge.  Thus,  the 
Italy  of  the  Renaissance  shows  a  proud  growth  of  indi- 
vidualism. Thus,  too,  as  said  above,  it  is  the  birthplace  of 
the  modern  individual,  who  sees  his  duty  in  the  realization  of 
his  endowment,  and  his  right  in  the  development  of  his 
energies. 

Along  with  these  remarks  another  matter  should  be  men- 
tioned. The  liberalizing  influence  of  the  Orient,  with  its 
survival  of  the  free  human  thought  and  life  of  antiquity, 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  151 

reached  the  Occident  through  the  crusaders,  who  invaded 
the  Orient  in  the  name  of  the  Roman  faith,  but  brought 
back  nothing  but  heresies. 

But  the  main  consideration  is  that,  when  the  literature  of 
antiquity  once  more  saw  the  light,  the  Italians  were  able  to 
make  it  their  own  in  a  quite  special  and  independent  manner, 
since  it  was  the  work  of  their  own  past,  bone  of  their  bone 
and  flesh  of  their  flesh.  The  great  importance  to  the  his- 
tory of  culture  of  this  general  return  to  the  literature  of 
antiquity — its  history,  philosophy,  and  poetry — was  that  it 
revealed  to  men  the  existence,  outside  the  pale  of  the  church, 
of  a  human  intellectual  life,  following  its  own  laws,  and  con- 
fident that  it  was  competent  in  and  of  itself,  and  by  its  own 
strength,  to  arrive  at  truth  and  to  determine  the  criteria  of 
truth;  while  authority-religion  maintained  that,  of  himself, 
man  was  incapable  of  knowing  the  truth,  and  consequently 
that  it  must  be  determined  for  him  by  processes  other  than 
his  own.  Moreover,  the  works  of  antiquity  served  as  models 
for  the  guidance  of  thought  until  thought  had  learned  to 
work  independently.  Here  there  is  a  striking  parallel 
between  Renaissance  and  Reformation.  As  the  Reformation 
signified  a  return  of  the  religious  consciousness  from  the 
Catholic  tradition  to  the  biblical,  from  the  doctrines  of  the 
church  to  the  literature  of  the  Bible,  so  Renaissance  was  a 
return  of  learned  culture  from  scholasticism  to  the  early 
Roman  and  Greek  literature.  In  both  cases  the  appeal  was 
from  the  reproductive  to  the  productive,  from  the  traditionary 
to  the  original,  from  the  ecclesiastical  to  the  humane.  And 
both  were  convinced  that  they  thereby  came  more  closely  to 
the  pure,  the  genuine,  the  true.  To  be  sure,  the  parallel 
reaches  farther:  this  procedure,  for  both  the  scientific  and 
the  religious  consciousness,  was  a  stage  on  the  way  from 
authority  to  freedom,  from  servility  to  independence,  from 
heteronomy  to  autonomy  in  both  thought  and  life.     That  is. 


152   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

there  was  for  both  the  transition,  along  the  pathway  of  an- 
tiquity ah'eady  indicated,  from  mediseval  dependence  on  the 
authority  of  the  church  and  of  Aristotle,  to  the  independent 
choice  of  cntthorities  first,  then  to  the  beginning  of  original 
and  uncontrolled  investigation  on  the  part  of  science,  and  to 
the  critical  primacy  of  personal  experience  of  faith  on  the 
part  of  religion.  It  is  thus  the  verdict  of  history  that  the 
human  spirit  is  not  satisfied,  either  in  science  or  in  religion, 
with  regress  from  one  authority  to  another,  however  preferable 
the  latter  may  be  to  the  former.  Certainly,  in  its  present 
advanced  state  of  development,  the  human  mind  cherishes 
the  unconquerable  assurance  that  it  possesses  within  itself 
the  norm  of  its  life  and  of  its  thought,  with  the  deep-seated 
desire  to  realize  itself,  religiously,  sesthetically,  scientifi- 
cally, morally,  by  obeying  its  own  law.  The  assent  of  our- 
selves, not  to  external  authority,  however  good,  but  to  our- 
selves— this  is  the  beginning  of  all  certainty  in  whatever 
region  of  life.  But  we  are  getting  ahead  of  our  story  and 
must  return  to  history. 

Scholasticism  itself  aided  in  the  transition  to  modern 
times,  not  alone  by  its  gradual  self -dissolution,  but  also 
by  positive  contributions.  As  one  can  find  the  religion  of 
the  Reformation  like  a  warm  stream  flowing  through  the 
Dead  Sea  of  a  former  ecclesiasticism,  so  one  can  also  find 
free  thought  before  the  thirteeenth  century.  As,  in  the 
ninth  century,  the  Catholic  Scotus  Erigena  denied  eternal 
punishment;  in  the  twelfth,  the  Catholic  Abelard  declared 
that  the  teachings  of  Greek  philosophers  were  superior 
to  those  of  the  Old  Testament;  in  the  thirteenth,  a  great 
number  of  Catholics  refused  to  believe  in  the  miraculous 
conception  and  resurrection  of  Christ,  and  Thomas  Aquinas 
and  Dun  Scotus  found  themselves  obliged  to  prove,  with  all 
arts  of  logic,  the  need  of  revelation  and  the  credibility  of 
the  Bible;   so  also  was  there,  on  the  part  of  many  ecclesias- 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  153 

tics,  a  freedom  of  thought  which  was  forerunner  of  the  theo- 
logical parties  of  Protestantism  and  the  new  learning  and 
science  in  general.  Dun  Scotus,  in  particular,  by  his 
emphatic  affirmation  of  individual  liberty,  proclaimed  a  new 
principle,  an  anti-authoritative  power,  which  grew  from  cen- 
tury to  century,  and  finally  led  to  the  emancipation  of  the 
religious  conscience  and  the  downfall  of  ecclesiastical  tradi- 
tion, nay,  of  biblical  tradition  (which  is  also  ecclesiastical), 
as  the  supreme  authority  in  matters  of  faith  and  conscience. 
Then  there  was  Occam  with  his  nominalism  —  precursor  of 
John  Locke.  Nominalism  weakened  at  once  the  alliance 
between  faith  and  science,  the  church  and  the  world.  It 
mirrored  the  ruling  purpose  of  the  age  to  shake  off  the  yoke 
of  Christian  Rome.  Desirous  of  promoting  the  welfare  of 
the  church,  nominalism  was  at  bottom  a  mass  of  tendencies 
hostile  to  Catholicism.  Political,  intellectual,  and  religious 
strivings  to  emancipate  peoples,  languages,  arts,  sciences, 
philosophy,  from  ecclesiastical  control  were  concealed 
beneath  its  seeming  devotion  to  the  church.     In  addition, 

free  thought  eagerly  seized  upon  the  literary  masterpieces  of  antiq- 
uity, which  are  made  known  by  Greek  emigrants,  and  which  the 
timely  invention  of  printing  hel^Ds  to  render  accessible  to  all.  The 
scientific  spirit  of  the  age  and  its  naturalistic  bent,  admirably 
assisted  by  the  invention  of  the  compass  and  the  telescope, 
triumphs  in  the  discovery  of  America  and  of  the  solar  system. 
The  contemplation  of  these  new  and  infinite  worlds  arouses  feel- 
ings of  enthusiasm  and  confidence  which  become  more  and  more 
dangerous  to  scholasticism  and  the  authoritative  system  of  the 
Church.^ 

Still,  the  Middle  Ages  were  no  period  of  utter  darkness. 
In  the  world  of  learning  we  have  just  seen  that  it  would  be 
difficult  to  draw  any  line  of  demarkation  between  them  and 
the  time  of  the  Renaissance.  The  Middle  Ages  have  rendered 
important  contributions  to  intellectual  development,  deepen- 

1  Weber. 


154    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

ing  the  intellectual  life,  sharpening  and  exercising  the 
powers  of  thought,  using  with  great  energy  the  limited 
means  of  culture  at  their  disposal.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to 
specify  points  in  which  mediaeval  thought  displays  signal 
excellence.  For  example,  there  is  its  fundamental  thought 
that  there  is  one  single  cause  of  all  things,  valuable  for 
accustoming  men  to  abstract  from  differences  and  details, 
and  preparative  for  accepting  the  interconnection  of  all 
things  according  to  law.  Such  a  thought  is  a  preparation 
for  a  conception  of  the  world  determined  by  science. 
Again,  poor  in  material,  the  Middle  Ages  were  rich  in 
forms.  They  developed  unparalleled  acuteness  in  drawing 
distinctions  and  building  up  arguments.  This  would  func- 
tion, as  it  did,  in  the  critical  investigation  of  their  own  pre- 
suppositions, which  had  so  long  been  regarded  as  fixed  and 
inviolable.  Finally,  the  Middle  Ages — this  was  their 
greatest  merit — were  absorbed  in  the  inner  world  of  the  life 
of  the  soul,  and  held  that  the  eternal  fate  of  personality  was 
determined  by  the  events  of  the  inner  life.  They  prepared 
the  way  for  a  thorough  investigation  of  the  great  problem 
of  spirit. 

Nevertheless,  the  Middle  Ages  failed  to  work  out  these 
free  and  fruitful  motives,  freely  and  fruitfully.  Their 
architectonic  genius  was  ambitious  to  combine  all  the 
elements  of  existence — natura,  gratia,  and  gloria- — into 
one  magnificent  graduated  and  ascending  system  of  reality. 
But  the  elements  collected  from  so  many  different  sides 
were  only  artificially  united  ;  their  attempt  at  summa  and 
synthesis  seems  to  have  been  premature.  The  philosophy 
of  Aristotle  was,  indeed,  calculated  to  display  existence  as 
an  uninterrupted  ascending  scale  ;  but  Aristotle  himself  was 
not  able  to  work  out  his  significant  conception.  Moreover, 
since  his  conception  tended  to  monism,  such  an  ecclesiastical 
thinker  as  Thomas  Aquinas,   e.  g.,   would  have  to  effect  an 


The  Changed  View  of  the  Woeld  155 

entire  breach  with  these  consequences,  and  to  set  up  a  dualism 
in  their  stead.  There  must  be  a  dualism  between  soul  and 
body — in  order  to  make  room  for  the  angels!  A  similar 
dualism  appears  in  ethics:  a  dualism  between  the  Greek 
cardinal  virtues,  wisdom,  justice,  courage,  and  self-mastery, 
and  the  theological  virtues,  faith,  hope,  and  love.  There  was 
dualism  again  between  the  Aristotelian  natural  development 
and  not  only  the  ecclesiastical  dogma  of  creation,  but  miracu- 
lous intervention  in  general.  Close  inspection  reveals  this 
dualism  all  along  the  line.  But  it  was  precisely  the  business 
of  mediaeval  thought  to  check  such  inspection.  Thought 
had  to  acrree  with  the  doctrines  of  the  church.  Aristotle 
was  ecclesiasticized.  Therefore  deviation  from  Aristotle  was 
heresy.  Therefore  thought  and  inquiry  were  arbitrarily 
checked  in  order  that  the  scientific  edifice  erected  by  the 
church  might  not  be  shaken.  "The  Aristotelian  philosophy, 
which  in  its  own  time  denoted  such  an  enormous  advance, 
was  now  set  up  as  valid  for  all  eternity.'"  Exact  natural 
science  could  not  develop.  The  principle  of  authority 
rejected  a  freer  and  further  investigation  of  problems 
and  established  dualism  as  a  permanent  result.  The  prin- 
ciple of  authority  is  itself  a  form  of  dualism,  having  place 
only  in  a  dualistic  Weltanschauung.  In  general,  there  was 
to  be  no  new  knowledge.  Men  were  to  nourish  themselves 
on  the  scanty  content  they  already  had,  and  to  interpret 
that  content,  by  violence  if  need  be,  as  the  church  wished. 
Small  wonder  that  there  arose  a  great  hunger  after  fulness 
of  content,  and  a  great  enthusiasm  for  the  new  riches 
streaming  in  from  all  sides  in  the  century  of  the 
Renaissance ! 

But  if  the  church  could  not  allow  outer  experience  free 
play,  much  less  could  she  venture  to  give  inner  experience 
its  own  way. 

1  Hoffding. 


156    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

The  dogmatist  ever  held  watch  over  the  mystic,  so  often  carried 
by  the  tides  of  his  inner  life  beyond  the  limits  of  the  feeling  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Church  as  right  and  true.  The  Church  said  that  it 
was  dangerous  for  men  to  withdraw  into  themselves,  and  thus  come 
into  immediate  contact  with  the  highest,  for  so  they  might  become 
independent  of  the  Chiu-ch.  She  suspected  that  self-knowledge,  no 
less  than  knowledge  of  nature,  offered  possibilities  of  spiritual 
freedom  and  opened  the  way  to  a  very  different  conception  of  the 
world  from  that  presented  by  theology.' 

But  it  was  not  only  the  attitude  of  the  church  to  religious 
self -absorption  or  introspection  that  checked  the  development 
of  inner  experience.  Dualism  was  at  work  here  also, 
hindering  the  recognition,  both  of  the  actual  operation  of 
laws  within  the  inner  sphere,  as  well  as  of  natural  inter- 
connection between  the  psychical  and  the  physical.  Con- 
sequently a  freer  and  more  comprehensive  conception  had  to 
be  developed  before  the  life  of  the  soul  could  be  rightly 
understood. 

What,  then,  is  the  meaning  of  Renaissance?  Renais- 
sance signifies  a  rebirth  of  the  Greek  type  of  life  and  view 
of  the  world,  say  of  the  age  of  Pericles.  In  that  age  there 
was  the  naive  unity  of  man  with  nature,  the  deification  of 
nature,  the  happy  enjoyment  of  life  which  was  restrained 
and  transfigured  only  by  the  influence  of  the  beautiful.  To 
this  antique  naturality  mediaeval  world-flight  was  opposed. 
Here  we  see  the  dualism  of  man  with  nature  outside  of  him 
and  within  him,  the  flight  from  nature's  demonic  charms  into 
cloister  cells,  the  castigation  of  the  body,  the  contempt  of 
beauty,  the  most  zealous  care  for  the  salvation  of  the  soul, 
absorption  in  contemplation  and  asceticism.  It  was  inevi- 
table that  the  ascetic,  negative  side  of  primitive  Christianity 
should  pass  into  ascendency  in  the  conflict  of  the  new 
religion  with  the  unbridled  sensualness  of  the  pagan  world; 
that  is,  should  widen  the  opposition   of  flesh  and  spirit  to 

1  HOffding,  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Vol.  I,  p.  9. 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  157 

the  utmost,  and  prefer  a  one-sided,  rigorous  spiritualism. 
It  feared  that  a  premature  conclusion  of  peace  on  the  part 
of  the  spirit  with  naturality  would  involve  the  sacrifice 
of  its  purity  and  sublimity,  of  the  very  foundation  of 
Christian  morality  itself.  Furthermore,  Christianity  found 
in  the  Roman  Empire  a  civic  life  which  was  implicated 
by  a  thousand  roots  with  pagan  faith  and  cultus,  which 
seemed  to  Christians  to  be  superstition  and  demonic 
idolatry  —  a  state  which  offered  little  that  was  satisfying 
to  the  more  ideal  needs  and  endeavors  of  the  better  spirits; 
which  forced  the  whole  existence  of  humanity,  regardlessly 
and  remainderlessly,  under  the  discipline  of  its  civic 
customs  and  orders.  Thus,  the  Christian  could  have  no 
inner  interest,  no  profound  and  active  participation  in 
this  state.  To  the  Christian  the  state  was  the  embodiment 
of  Satanic  world-power,  the  very  counterpart  of  the  heavenly 
kingdom  of  God.  Two  survivals  from  eai'ly  Christianity — 
the  imminent  return  of  Christ  to  establish  an  earthly  mes- 
sianic kingdom,  and  the  idea  that  the  present  world  was 
under  the  dominion  of  the  devil — exercised  a  powerful 
influence  on  the  moral  disposition.  On  the  one  hand, 
these  led  to  watchfulness,  pruning,  abnegation,  and  to 
marvelous  heroism  and  hope.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
rendered  a  healthy  and  clear  appreciation  for  real  life,  and 
its  moral  tasks  and  relations,  quite  impossible.  Christians 
lost  sight  of  the  historical  ends  of  society.  Improvement  of 
the  world  would  seem  to  them  a  matter  of  superfluity,  and 
even  of  unbelief.  There  was  no  motive  for  self-forgetful  and 
ministrant  toil  in  the  interest  of  the  great  objective  ends 
of  the  life  of  the  race.  Care  for  the  salvation  of  one's  own 
soul,  anxiety  that  the  soul  should  be  unspotted  by  the 
wicked  world,  tense  expectation  of  the  speedy  end  of  the 
world — these  overbore  interest  in  moral  society,  and  dulled 
the  sense  for  the  positive  moral   worth  of  society,  and  the 


158    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

feeling  of  obligation  to  produce  homely  human  values. 
Even  the  family,  like  the  state,  lost  its  higher  ideal  worth, 
and  was  treated  as  a  necessary  evil,  which  the  elite  should 
avoid.  But  it  still  remained  true  that  the  natural  impulse 
to  social  unification  and  organization,  and  to  the  corre- 
sponding practical  initiative  of  the  inner  life,  could  not 
be  repressed,  and  therefore  sought  and  found  satisfaction  in 
the  forms  of  ecclesiastical  community.  A  new  world  arose 
beyond  and  above  the  natural-moral  world.  The  church 
organized  itself  as  supernatural  civitas  dei,  in  opposition  to 
common  civic  society.  Monks  and  nuns,  as  the  6lite  of  the 
ecclesiastical  piety,  became  representatives  of  suj^ernatural 
virtue,  of  superhuman  sanctity ;  the  theologians  became 
bearers  of  supernatural  revealed  knowledge ;  priests  became 
bearers  of  s^ipernatural  sacramental  work,  blessings,  and 
curses;  bishops,  above  all,  became  bearers  of  supermdural 
authority  and  power  lent  them  by  Christ  and  his  aj^ostles, 
which  were  as  superior  to  all  secular  rule  as  the  light  of  the 
sun  is  to  that  of  the  moon.  Thus,  the  mediaeval  church 
built  a  second  world  above  the  natural  human  world,  with 
the  claim  that  the  former  alone  was  true  and  good  and 
beautiful. 

Now,  at  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages  comes  the  humanistic 
cry :  Back  from  the  unnaturalness  of  ecclesiastical  com- 
pulsion to  original  nature  and  beautiful  humanity ;  back 
from  cloister  and  monastic  orders  to  state  and  family  and 
school ;  back  from  ecclesiastical  nonage  to  independent 
search  for  truth,  from  the  restrictions  of  the  ecclesiastical 
traditional  forms  of  art  to  find  the  true  laws  of  beauty 
in  nature  herself ;  back  from  the  fatherlandless  world- 
theocracy  of  the  Roman  Church  to  a  new  national  self- 
consciousness,  kindled  by  the  models  of  classic  patriots ;  back 
from  the  ecclesiastic  conception  of  man  as  7ion  posse  non 
peccare,  as  damned  and  doomed  in  the  heart  of  his  being, 


The  Changed  View  or  the  World  159 

to  be  rescued  only  by  ecclesiastical  agency,  to  some 
conviction  of  natural  endowment  and  resident  forces,  to 
goodness  and  truth  and  beauty — endowment  and  forces 
which  can  be  developed  and  organized  by  contact  with 
the  great  realities  of  history  and  of  nature !  This  is 
Humanism.  It  is  a  new  efPort  to  appreciate  the  unity 
of  reality,  "to  assert  the  law-abidingness  and  authorization 
of  natural  human  life."  The  assertion  of  the  worth  and 
the  rio^ht  of  the  human  and  the  natural  over  agfainst  the 
ecclesiastical  and  supernatural,  of  the  here  over  against  the 
hereafter — that  was  the  spirit  of  the  period  which  we  call 
Renaissance.  Can  Humanism  be  Christian  Humanism? 
The  latter  is  the  exact  opposite  of  authority-religion,  and 
is  alone  the  type  of  Christianity  consonant  with  the  modern 
view  of  human  life,  generic  and  individual.  Thus,  the 
cry  was.  Back  to  Greece  !  only  as  a  stadium  forward  on 
the  way  to  Man,  It  is  yet  to  be  the  contention  of  this 
book  that  the  adjective  "Christian,"  properly  understood, 
sets  forth  the  structural  and  abiding  characteristic  of  the 
Human,  But  I  hasten  to  urge  now  that  Humanism  was  not 
fully  human.  It  was  false  by  defect.  There  was  the  dis- 
covery of  man,  but  not  of  the  whole  man  ;  of  man  exten- 
sively in  history,  but  not  intensively  in  spirit ;  of  the  man  of 
sense,  but  not  of  conscience.  Heteronomy  is  not  entirely 
overcome  by  the  transfer  of  the  seat  of  authority  from  tra- 
dition without  to  nature  within.  Authority  is  thus  peripheral 
still,  and  awaits,  to  be  truly  autonomous,  the  discovery  of 
the  center  of  the  inner  life  which  is  the  conscience  and 
moral  will,  where  alone  its  seat  constitutionally  is.  Thus, 
the  extensive  discovery  of  Humanism  must  be  supplemented 
by  the  intensive  discovery  of  the  Reformation.  If  the 
former  widened  the  bounds  of  the  outer  world,  the  latter 
widened  those  of  the  inner.  Humanism  without  the  adjec- 
tive "Christian"   is  not   fully  and  really  human. 


160   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

By  way  of  summary,  "Weber's  comprehensive  statement 
is  admirable: 

From  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  centm-y  on,  western  Europe 
experienced  a  series  of  surprises.  Led  by  the  Greek  scholars  who 
settled  in  Italy,  she  entered  directly  into  the  promised  land,  which 
the  Arabians  of  Spain  had  in  part  revealed  to  her :  I  mean, 
antiquity  with  its  literature,  philosophy,  and  art.  The  historical 
horizon  of  our  fathers,  which  originally  bounded  the  Catholic 
era,  grows  larger  and  extends  far  beyond  the  beginnings  of  Chris- 
tianity. The  Catholic  Church,  outside  of  which  nothing  but 
darkness  and  barbarism  seemed  to  prevail,  was  now  regarded  simply 
as  the  daughter  and  heir  of  an  older,  richer,  more  diversified 
civilization,  of  a  civilization  more  in  accord  with  the  genius  of 
the  western  races.  The  Romance  and  Germanic  nations  of 
Em'Ope  feel  closely  akin  to  these  Greeks  and  Romans  whom 
the  chmrch  excluded  from  her  pale,  but  who  were,  in  so  many 
respects,  superior  to  the  Christians  of  the  fifteenth  century  in 
all  the  spheres  of  human  activity.  The  Catholic  prejudice, 
according  to  which  there  can  be  neither  salvation  nor  real  civili- 
zation nor  religion  nor  morality  beyond  the  confines  of  the  church, 
gradually  disappears.  Men  cease  to  be  exclusive  Catholics  and 
become  men,  humanists,  and  philanthropists  in  the  broadest  sense 
of  the  term.  Not  merely  a  few  stray  glimpses  of  the  past,  but 
the  whole  history  of  Aryan  Europe,  with  its  countless  political, 
literary,  philological,  archaeological,  and  geographical  problems, 
are  unrolled  before  the  astonished  gaze  of  our  ancestors.' 

So  much  with  reference  to  man's  discovery  of  humanity, 
to  the  replacement  of  church-man  by  man;  of  the  state  of 
God  by  the  states  of  the  peoples ;  of  the  ideal  of  angelic  life 
by  that  of  human  life,  with  the  common  human  feelings 
and  thoughts  and  purposes.^ 

1  History  of  Philosophy,  pp.  281,  282. 

-  In  this  connection  the  difference  between  the  old  and  the  new  guarantees  of 
certainty  may  be  mentioned.  For  the  old,  the  guarantee  is  superhumanness ;  for  the 
new,  true  and  genuine  humanness.  For  the  old,  the  guarantee  reposes  on  the  basis 
of  the  disesteem  of  our  nature  and  endowment ;  for  the  new,  on  the  basis  of  profound 
regard  for  humanity.  Behind,  not  simply  the  scholastic,  but  also  the  biblical 
consciousness,  there  lies  the  decadence  of  personal  life,  of  personal  humanity; 
behind  ours,  its  renaissance.  In  the  whole  biblical  and  scholastic  view  there 
is  profound  distrust  with  reference  to  the  power  of  personality,  of  humanity;  with 
us,  a  conquering  faith  in  the  worth  of  one's  own  inner  life  is  veritably  constitutive. 


The  Changed  View  op  the  World  101 

Almost  simultaneous  with  man's  discovery  of  himself  was 
his  acquaintance  with  the  real  form  of  his  earthly  habita- 
tion.    Of  this  matter  also  Weber's  brief  account  may  suffice : 

The  Catholic  universe  consisted  of  the  world  known  to  the 
Romans,  i.  e.,  of  the  Mediterranean  valley  and  the  southwestern 
part  of  Asia,  with  northern  Europe  added.  But  now  Columbus 
discovers  the  New  World.  Vasco  da  Gama  sails  around  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  and  finds  the  sea-route  to  India;  above  all,  Magellan 
succeeds  in  making  the  tour  of  the  earth.  These  discoveries  verify 
an  hypothesis  with  which  the  ancients  had  long  been  familiar — 
the  hypothesis  that  our  earth  is  a  globe,  isolated  and  suspended 
in  space.  What  could  be  more  natural  than  to  infer  that  the  stars, 
too,  float  in  space  without  being  attached  to  anything,  and  that 
the  spheres  of  Aristotle  are  mere  illusions  ?  The  earth  is  now  con- 
ceived as  a  globe,  but  everybody  still  regards  it  as  the  immovable 
center  around  which  the  heavenly  spheres  revolve.  Tycho  Brahe 
directs  the  first  attack  against  the  traditional  and  popular  cos- 
mography by  placing  the  sun  in  the  center  of  the  planetary  system; 
but  he  still  believes  that  the  solar  system  revolves  around  the  earth. 
This  theory,  which  had  already  been  advanced  by  several  of  the 
ancients,  and  which  Copernicus  presents  merely  as  hypothesis,  is 
confirmed  by  the  splendid  labors  of  Kepler,  who  discovers  the  form 
of  the  planetary  orbits  and  the  laws  of  their  motion;  and  of  Galileo, 
who  teaches  that  the  earth  has  a  double  motion,  and  with  a  tele- 
scope of  his  own  construction,  discovers  the  satellites  of  Jupiter 
and  the  law  of  their  revolution.^ 

To  such  discoveries  as  these,  add  now  the  inventions  of 
the  time — gunpowder,  printing-press,  compass,  as  well  as 
telescope !  These  were  the  weapons  before  which  the  old 
science  trembled.  How  characteristic  the  old  anecdote  con- 
cerning Cremonini  (when  Galileo  had  discovered  the  satel- 
lites of  Jupiter)  that  he  would  never  look  through  a  telescope 
again,  because  it  refuted  Aristotle  !  With  these  means  of 
investigation  the  new  science  possessed  an  inexhaustible 
fountain  from  which  it  could  draw  independent  strength,  cast- 
ing off  the  yoke  of  every  authority,  and  receiving  from  the 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  283,  284. 


162    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

hands  of  nature  that  gift  of  God  after  which  the  whole 
Renaissance  yearned  and  struggled — the  freedom  of  the 
spirit. 

Of  all  the  modern  discoveries,  the  Copernican  theory 
proved  to  be  the  most  influential.  The  appearance  of  the 
Celestial  Revolutions  is  the  most  important  event,  the  great- 
est epoch,  in  the  intellectual  history  of  Europe.  It  marks 
the  beginning  of  the  modern  world.  It  revealed  to  us  the 
infinite.  In  particular,  as  bearing  upon  our  thesis,  for  the 
transcendentalism  of  authority-religion,  it  necessitated  the 
substitution  of  the  modern  principle  of  divine  immanency, 
with  all  the  reliofious  and  theolocrical  revolutions  entailed 
thereby.  It  made  both  Bruno's  metaphysics  and  his  fate 
possible. 

The  heliocentric  theory  aroused  great  ecclesiastical  alarm. 
It  is  wonderful  to  think  how  positive  great  and  good  men 
were  in  the  maintenance  of  error  as  the  absolute  truth,  and 
how  readily  they  condemned  others  who  sought  to  correct 
those  errors  in  order  to  promote  world-betterment.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  the  common  belief  still  was,  of  course, 
that  the  earth  was  stationary,  and  Protestants  as  well  as 
Roman  Catholics  were  led  to  regard  Copernicus  and  others 
as  "atheists  and  impious  teachers."  This  is  among  the 
utterances  of  Martin  Luther: 

People  gave  ear  to  an  upstart  astrologer  who  strove  to  show  that 
the  earth  revolved,  not  the  heavens  or  the  firmament,  the  sun 
and  the  moon.  Whoever  wishes  to  appear  clever  must  devise  some 
new  system,  which  of  all  systems  is,  of  course,  the  best  way.  This 
fool  wishes  to  reverse  the  entire  science  of  astronomy,  but  sacred 
Scripture  tells  us  that  Joshua  commanded  the  sun  to  stand  still 
and  not  the  earth. 

Even  Melancthon,  with  more  scholarly  mind,  bore  the  fol- 
lowing testimony: 

The  eyes  are  the  witnesses  that  the  heavens  revolve  in  the  space 
of  twenty-four   hours.     But  certain  men,  either  from  the  love  of 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  163 

novelty  or  to  make  a  display  of  ingenuity,  have  concluded  that  the 
earth  mores;  and  they  maintain  that  neither  the  eighth  sphere  nor 
the  sun  revolves.  Now  it  is  want  of  honesty  and  decency  to  assert 
such  notions  publicly,  and  the  example  is  pernicious.  It  is  the 
part  of  a  good  mind  to  accept  the  truth  as  revealed  by  God  and  to 
acquiesce  in  it.  The  earth  can  be  nowhere  except  in  the  center  of 
the  universe.' 

Every  schoolboy  knows  how  Galileo  was  treated  by  devout  \ 
ecclesiastics  of  his  day,  whose  minds  were  fixed  in  error's 
chains  and  shut  against  the  light.  John  Calvin  proved  to 
his  own  satisfaction,  and  that  of  many  followers,  from  the 
Scriptures  "that  the  heavens,  sun,  and  moon  move  about  the 
earth,  which  stands  still  in  the  center."  The  Copernican 
system  w^as  condemned  by  the  famous  John  Owen,  a  great 
Puritan  leader,  who  referred  to  it  as  a  "delusion  and  arbi- 
trary hypothesis  contrary  to  Scripture."  Even  John  Wesley 
shared  in  the  common  error  and  regarded  unfavorably  the 
new  ideas,  which,  he  said,  "tend  to  infidelity." 

Fromundus  said  that  the  utter  futility  of  the  Copernican 
theory  was  shown  by  this,  that,  if  it  were  true,  "buildings 
and  the  earth  itself  would  fly  off  with  such  a  rapid  motion 
that  men  would  have  to  be  provided  with  claws  like  cats,  to 
enable  them  to  hold  fast  to  the  earth's  surface."  A  digres- 
sion may  be  pardonable  that  one  may  meditate  upon  the 
similar  state  of  things  today.  Human  nature  is  much  the 
same  in  all  ages.  Man's  history  is  like  the  course  of  develop- 
ment generally  in  creation.  It  takes  place  by  action  and 
reaction,  by  positive  and  negative  forces,  by  a  law  of  per- 

1  They  were  as  sure  that  the  old  view  of  the  heavens  was  as  essential  to 
Christian  faith  as  many  of  our  ecclesiastics  of  today,  untrained  in  critical  and  philo- 
sophic thought,  feel  sure  that,  e.  g.,  the  inspiration  dogma,  or  the  dogma  of  the 
deity  of  Christ  conceived  as  the  second  one  of  the  three  persons  of  the  Trinity,  is  an 
integral  element  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  opposition  to  these  dogmas  today 
is  no  more  painful  to  the  feelings  of  such  ecclesiastics,  is  no  more  pernicious  and 
criminal  in  their  sight,  than  was  the  assault  upon  the  Ptolemaic  astronomy  in  the 
eyes  of  Luther  and  Melaucthon.  If  indignation  and  pained  feelings  on  the  part  of 
our  modern  churchmen  be  evidence  iu  favor  of  these  dogmas,  Luther  and  Melancthon 
outclassed  them  —  some  of  them  —  in  adducing  such  evidence  in  favor  of  the  old 
astronomy  I 


164   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

manence,  growth,  and  change.  The  two  factors  appear  in 
human  history  as  in  all  the  lower  works  of  God.  There  they 
are  known  as  the  Old  and  the  New,  Conservatism  and  Prog- 
ress. This  twofold  division  of  elements,  and  the  corre- 
sponding antagonism,  is  the  very  essence  of  history.  The 
mistakes  referred  to,  with  countless  others,  the  new  ideas 
introduced  and  battles  fought,  are  the  inevitable  manifesta- 
tions of  life  in  all  human  advance.  The  conflict  we  see  today 
in  religion,  in  industry,  in  business,  in  politics,  between  the 
Old  mid  the  New,  is  a  scientific  Jiecessiiy.  It  is  human 
nature.  Men  become  classified  and  differentiated  according 
to  these  two  great  factors,  the  conservative  or  fossilized  and 
the  progressive.  New  ideas  take  possession  of  certain 
people.  They  are  costly  things  to  cherish  and  espouse. 
They  require  sacrifice  and  suffering.  To  champion  the  new 
means  a  battle  with  the  people  who  are  intrenched  in  the 
old  ideas,  and  whose  varied  interests  are  bound  up  in  them. 
It  means  enemies  who  are  heartless  and  cruel,  even  among 
those  who  pretend  great  devotion  to  Him  whom  they  com- 
placently speak  of  as  '■'■our  Christ,''''  but  who  was  crucified 
by  the  same  spirit  they  manifest,  because  he  introduced 
revolutionary  ideas  into  the  world.  This  is  the  story  of  all 
human  advance  in  all  ages. 

Many  are  the  lessons  taught  by  these  reflections;  only 
two  can  be  named  here.  They  who  become  identified  with 
a  righteous,  unpopular  cause,  and,  in  the  face  of  great  diffi- 
culties, firmly  contend  for  the  Truth,  are  among  heaven's 
nobility.  The  unspeakable  comfort  is  theirs  that  they  are 
following  the  voice  of  God  in  their  own  souls,  and  that  "the 
right  the  day  will  win"  and  prove  an  untold  blessing  to  the 
world. 

The  greatest  need  today  in  society  is  that  of  men  and 
women  everywhere  who  will  stand  for  Progress,  and  the 
overthrow  of  those  gigantic  blunders  which  even  now  curse 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  165 


the  world  and  prevent  the  coming  of  the  social  order  when 
true  religion  and  true  science  will  be  joined  together  again. 

But,  important  as  these  observations  are,  I  must  speedily 
return  from  this  digression  to  the  prosecution  of  my  main 
task. 

We  have  seen  that  as  the  Humanistic  movement  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  widened  the  historical 
horizon,  so  a  series  of  favorable  events,  as  well  as  inferences 
of  bold,  genial  thought,  transformed  the  scientific  picture  of 
nature.  By  the  new  astronomic  theory  the  Ptolemaic 
system  was  shattered,  and  an  apprehension  of  cosmic  rela- 
tions, which  now  underlies  our  whole  scientific  view  of  the 
world,  was  put  in  its  place.  But,  what  concerns  us  more 
just  now,  it  was  through  this  new  knowledge  that  man  was 
led  to  lift  up  his  eyes  from  the  confines  of  earthly  existence 
to  the  boundlessness,  perhaps  the  infinitude,  of  the  universe. 
The  exchange  of  the  geocentric  for  the  heliocentric  stand- 
point seemed  to  assign  to  man  himself  a  role  in  the  system 
of  existence  entirely  different  from  that  which  he  had  been 
wont  to  imagine.  Difficult  and  painful  as  it  might  be,  man 
had  to  wean  himself  from  the  thought  that  his  friendly  and 
familiar  dwelling-place  was  the  one  around  which  the  whole 
universe  revolved.  He  had  to  dismiss  the  beautiful  idea 
that  the  occurrences  which  transpired  on  this  earth  were 
fraught  with  cosmic  destinies.  The  earth  is  but  an  ordinary 
satellite  of  a  planet  which  is  itself  only  a  star  among  number- 
less stars,  a  mere  vanishing-point  in  the  illimitable  All.  This 
grain  of  sand  on  the  shore  of  the  infinite  sea,  how  could 
centrality  and  supremacy  be  still  accorded  to  it?  And  that 
which  takes  place  upon  its  surface,  how  could  it  be  decisive 
of  the  fate  of  the  shoreless  All?  Thus,  as  soon  as  the  con- 
ception of  the  universe  ceased  to  be  geocentric  physically,  it 
had  to  be  magnified  spiritually,  so  that  the  cosmic  evolution 
was  no  longer  to  be  contemplated  from  the  limited  point  of 


166    The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

view  of  mankind,  with  its  needs,  wishes,  and  hopes.  Herein 
lies  the  significance  of  Copernicanism.  But  if  it  thus  casts 
men  down,  it  also  lifts  them  up,  inasmuch  as  this  new  knowl- 
edge was  a  triumph  of  critical  reason  over  the  crudeness  of 
sense-perception — a  consideration  to  which  we  must  return 
in  the  following  chapter,  as  a  leading  point  in  the  count 
against  naturalism. 

Now,  it  was  this  Copernican  doctrine  that  Bruno  so 
enthusiastically  promulgated  throughout  Europe.  From  the 
new  astronomical  theory  he  drew  the  necessary  metaphysical 
consequence  of  the  infinity  of  the  world,  thus  falling  into 
conflict  with  the  old  religion  and  confession,  as  well  as  with 
the  authority  of  Aristotle,  which  sanctioned  the  church's 
belief  in  the  finitude  of  the  world.  As  already  said,  Bruno 
was  burned  in  Rome,  a  martyr  of  modern  science,  precisely 
two  thousand  years  after  Socrates  drank  the  hemlock. 

For  the  rest,  I  am  concerned  only  with  the  effect  that 
Copernicanism  logically  has  upon  the  ecclesiastical  form  of 
Christianity.  The  traditional  religion  was  inveterately  con- 
volved with  that  old,  naive  world-scheme.  That  old  picture 
of  nature  was  both  anthropomorphic  and  geocentric.  The 
world  was  considered  to  be  limited;  everything  that  existed 
belonged  in  a  definite  place;  indeed,  it  was  non-existent,  if 
it  did  not.  The  earth  was  the  center  of  the  world,  of  which 
the  vault  of  heaven,  not  so  far  away,  was  the  outermost 
limit.  What  happened  on  the  earth  decided  the  fate  of  the 
whole  creation.  This  was  the  Aristotelio-mediseval  scheme 
of  the  world.  Because  Aristotle  had  incorporated  this  con- 
ception in  his  system,  and  because  his  system  was  in  harmony 
with  the  circle  of  biblical  ideas,  both  were  taken  up  by 
ecclesiastical  theology,  and  were  thus  regnant  until  the 
modern  period.  Aristotle  said :  "All  men  believe  that  there 
are  gods,  and  assign  the  uppermost  places  to  the  Deity." 
The  expressions  "high"  and  "low"  originally  had    literal 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  167 

meaning.  The  antithesis  between  heaven  and  earth  was  one 
with  the  antithesis  between  the  divine  and  the  human  or 
transitory,  the  perfect  and  the  imperfect.  In  each  case  what 
was  the  one  was  not  the  other.  Heaven  is  God's  throne; 
the  earth  is  his  footstool.  If  there  be  several  heavens, 
circle  upon  circle,  God's  seat  is  the  highest  of  them  all.  Nar- 
ratives of  the  ascent  of  Jesus  into  heaven  and  of  his  descent 
into  hell,  Paul's  experiences  with  the  seventh  heaven,  and 
the  like,  all  presuppose  the  old  world-view.  So  do  angelic 
visitations  and  ministries.  The  program  of  redemption  was 
decreed  in  heaven  and  executed  on  earth;  and  so  forth. 

Now,  in  view  of  the  immeasurable  extension  of  the  hori- 
zon which  Copernicanism  and  modern  natural  science  have 
consummated,  it  becomes  evident  that  every  determination 
of  place  is  dependent  upon  the  place  of  the  observer,  and 
that  there  is  no  longer  any  absolute  distinction  between  the 
heavenly  and  the  earthly  regions,  nor  between  the  natural 
places  within  the  earthly  regions.  Every  place  is  deter- 
mined by  its  relation  to  every  other  place,  as,  similarly,  every 
cause  is  determined  by  its  relation  to  every  other  cause.. 
Fixity  yields  to  motion,  absoluteness  to  relativity.  The  sharp,, 
clear  framework  within  which  the  content  of  religious  ideas; 
had  been  localized  falls  away.  To  begin  with,  the  God-idea 
is  profoundly  affected  by  this  apprehension,  inasmuch  as  not 
until  now  were  the  conditions  ripe  for  its  universality  and 
immediacy.  Indeed,  not  until  the  rise  of  this  new  concep- 
tion could  the  idea  of  monotheism  enjoy  full  fruition,  since 
polytheism  may  very  well  survive  even  after  the  number  of 
the  gods  has  been  reduced  to  but  one.  Hitherto  ecclesi- 
astical monotheism  had  been  polytheistic.  It  follows,  more- 
over, that  all  notion  of  human  particularity  must  be  alienated 
from  the  idea  of  the  divine  Personality,  so  much  so  as  to 
make  Personality  an  inadequate  analogy  by  means  of  which 
our  imagination  seeks  to  represent  God.     For  another  thing, 


168    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

according  to  the  new  cosmic  conception,  the  idea  of  the 
externality  of  the  Divine  is  in  principle  overcome,  and  that 
of  metaphysical  immanence  is  unavoidable.  Along  with 
this,  the  old  idea  of  a  concatenated  series  of  causes  regress- 
ing step  by  step  to  a  "First  Cause,"  an  unmoved  Mover, 
to  which  all  is  linked — quite  as  Zeus  threatened  to  hang  the 
world  on  a  summit  of  Olympus — is  retired,  and  the  idea  of 
an  immanent  principle  of  unity  of  all  reality  is  put  in  its 
place.  Nature  no  longer  receives  its  life  from  an  alien 
hand.  "It  befits  him  to  move  the  world /row  within,'^''  said 
Goethe.^  Thus  religious  ideas  experience  an  internalizing 
and  spiritualizing,  conformably  to  the  new  apprehension  of 
the  world.  In  consequence,  creation  is  no  longer  to  be  con- 
ceived as  free  miraculous  acts  of  an  external  creator,  anthro- 
pomorphically  pictured,  but  as  a  work  from  within;  not  as 
single,  finished  acts,  but  as  beginningless  and  endless,  self- 
consistent  divine  work — "My  Father  worketh  hitherto;''''^ 
not  as  an  arbitrary  and  contingent  work,  but  as  a  lawful, 
purposeful  work  ordered  by  divine  reason.  Nor  can  revela- 
tion be  thought  of  longer  in  terms  of  the  old  view  of  the 
world.  According  to  the  latter,  there  are  a  Below  and  an 
Above,  between  which  two  poles  all  the  acts  of  sacred  his- 
tory from  paradise  to  parousia  are  consummated.  But 
when  the  Below  and  the  Above,  the  stage  of  all  these  acts, 
vanish,  what  becomes  of  the  acts  themselves,  in  which  faith 
had  visualized  the  divine  revelation  ?  Revelation  is  no 
longer  to  be  conceived  as  an  external,  visible  act  between 
heaven  and  earth,  but  as  a  spiritual  process  in  the  heart  of 
man;  no  longer  as  the  miraculous  communication  of  divine 

1 "  Was  war'  ein  Gott,  der  nur  von  aussen  stiesse, 

Im  Kreis  das  All  am  Finger  laufen  liesse ! 

Jft.ni  zieniVs  die  Welt  im  innern  zu  betvegen, 

Natur  in  Sich,  Sich  in  Natur  zu  hegen, 

So  dass,  was  in  ihm  lebt  and  webt  und  ist, 

Nie  seine  Kraft,  nie  seinen  Geist  vermisst." 

— Goethe,  Gott  unci  Welt,  "Proemion," 
2  John  5: 17. 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  169 

instruction,  of  a  legal  and  statutory  character  at  that,  but  as 
an  immanent  divine  self-expression  and  self-realization. 
And  "heaven"  itself  is  no  longer  a  locality,  but  an  ideal; 
not  a  cosmic  region,  but  a  cosmic  value.  The  same  is  true 
of  hell.  The  stories  of  the  ascension  of  Jesus  into  heaven 
and  of  his  descent  into  hell  must  be  interpreted  accordingly, 
thereby  ceasing  to  be  records  of  historical  and  cosmological 
facts. 

After  all,  it  may  well  have  been  a  correct  ecclesiastical 
instinct  which  pronounced  a  sentence  of  annihilation  against 
Giordano  Bruno  in  Rome.  For  the  new  cosmology  in  fact 
razes  the  whole  mediaeval  structure  of  the  church.  It  is  the 
promise  and  potency  of  all  heresies.  If  the  world  be 
boundless,  there  can  be  no  second  world  beside  it,  beyond  it, 
to  which  the  church  in  her  faith  and  sacrament  possesses 
the  keys.  Nor  can  the  claim  of  the  church  be  honored  that 
all  power  has  been  given  to  her  in  heaven  and  on  earth.  And 
the  "grace"  by  which  man  is  "saved"  cannot  be  something 
acosmic,  non-human,  to  be  sacramentally — or  doctrinally — 
mediated  by  an  ecclesiastical  institute.  Nor  does  the 
Beyond,  the  Supernatural,  lie  outside  of  the  world,  or 
our  earth,  or  ourselves.  It  is  in  the  dust  beneath  our  feet, 
in  every  human  soul,  in  every  living  thing.  The  tran- 
scendent is  lived  within  us;  it  lives  in  every  throb  of  the 
heart;  it  glows  in  every  spirit.  The  infinite  is  both  behind 
and  before  telescope  and  microscope:  and  it  is  one  and  the 
same.  The  infinite  is  in  the  finite,  the  supersensible  in  the 
sensible;  the  cosmic  and  the  theistic,  the  human  and  the 
divine,  are  not  exclusive,  disparate,  incommensurable.  Thus 
the  new  picture  of  the  world  yields  a  new  insight  into  the 
depths  of  the  pious  human  heart.  As  its  world  is  greater 
and  more  mysterious,  more  awe-inspiring,  more  all-embracing, 
so  is  its  God.  Therefore  the  martyr  of  the  new  Cosmos 
did  not  undermine  religion,  but  ransomed  it.     He  led  man 


170   The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

out  into  the  open.     Vision  and  love  are  no  longer  hemmed 
in  by  fixed  bounds  that  they  cannot  pass. 

If  we  pause  to  think  of  this  rescue  of  religion  by  the  new 
view  of  the  world,  we  see  that  it  is  the  same  old  path  which 
the  devout  human  heart  has  taken  once  yet  again,  just  when 
it  might  seem  that  the  hour  for  the  death  of  religion  has 
struck.  Just  when  the  folly  of  the  omniscience  and  om- 
nipotence of  man  was  narrowing  religion,  comprehending 
heaven  and  earth  by  the  dogmas  of  their  wisdom,  piloting 
the  whole  world  according  to  their  own  will  by  the  magic 
formulas  of  their  prayers  and  offerings,  a  pious  genius 
gradually  led  the  omniscient  and  omnipotent  to  that  which 
they  did  not  and  could  not  know  and  do — to  the  lilies 
of  the  fields  and  the  birds  of  the  air,  as  to  whose  bloom 
and  life  man  was  at  the  end  of  his  wits,  because  this  life 
welled  up  out  of  the  infinite  itself;  then  on  to  man  himself, 
in  whose  soul  were  hidden  abysses  of  life  which  no  one 
could  fathom,  but  which  yet  caught  the  echoes  of  a 
compassion,  a  righteousness  and  perfection,  whose  home  and 
hearth  are  in  the  bosom  of  the  infinite,  in  the  heart  of  the 
heavenly  Father;  and  they  whisper  to  man  that  he  is  not 
what  he  has  become,  but  what  he  is  endowed  to  become; 
that  he  is  an  infinite  becoming.  The  death  of  religion! — this 
is  rather  that  theology  which  would  only  interrogate  the 
fathers  of  the  church  and  the  decisions  of  the  councils,  in. 
order  to  solve  all  the  riddles  of  the  world,  and  give  man  an 
infallible,  all-suflBcient  answer  to  the  questions  of  his  life. 
The  grave  of  religion! — this  is  rather  that  faith  in  a  world 
which,  at  the  hands  of  a  master  in  Israel,  had  become  so 
narrow  and  petty,  so  finite,  that  any  scribe  thought  that  he 
could  conceive  it  and  categorize  it  with  his  concepts.  And 
if  the  picture  of  nature  of  the  new  time  had  done  nothing 
more  than  redeem  us  from  this  limitedness,  infuse  in  us 
again    a    sacred    feeling    of   reverence,    of   respect    for  the 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  171 

infinite,  unsearchable  Life,  it  would  yet  have  done  more 
thereby  for  the  rejuvenation  and  reanimation  of  religion 
than  we  can  even  today  realize.  The  release  of  the  cosmos 
from  its  fixity  and  finitude  was  the  first  step  to  the  freedom 
of  the  human  spirit  from  the  stability  of  opinion  and 
convention  in  religion,  and  to  the  unsealing  of  new  fountains 
of  life  and  power. 

But  the  world  of  time,  no  less  than  the  world  of  space, 
has  undergone  immeasurable  extension,  both  to  speculative 
and  to  scientific  thought.  Speculatively,  Professor  Harald 
Hoffding  has  recently  reminded  us  again  that  it  follows 
from  the  very  concept  of  time  that  each  single  moment 
must  lie  between  two  other  moments.  Accordingly, 
there  can  be  neither  a  "first"  moment  nor  a  "last"  moment. 
Time  has  no  "befyinninoj"  and  no  "end."  But  to  the 
religious  consciousness,  in  its  mythical  and  dogmatic  form, 
at  home  in  the  old  world-scheme  —  for  the  matter  of  that, 
to  the  New  England  apprehension — there  was  but  a  short 
time  before  the  end,  and  only  a  comparatively  short 
time  stretched  between  "creation"  and  "judgment  day." 
Between  these  two  "fixed"  points  the  great  religions  and 
redemptive  events  find  their  atomistic  and  unhistorical 
locations.  But  reflective  thought  has  made  it  perfectly 
clear  that,  as  there  are  no  fixed  and  absolute  bounds  to 
cause  and  space,  so  there  are  none  to  time.  First  a  fixed 
world,  then  a  moving  world  between  fixed  points,  then 
a  moving  world — that  is  the  order  in  regard  to  all  three. 
To  the  relativity  of  cause  and  space  must  now  be  added 
that  of  time. 

The  influence  of  this  new  conception  upon  the  ecclesi- 
astical type  of  Christianity  is  too  obvious  to  require  minute 
elaboration.  First,  eternity  can  no  longer  be  conceived  as 
"before"  and  "after"  time,  or  as  making  intermittent 
encroachments  in  the  time-series,  but  must  be  thought  of  as 


172    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

immanent  in  all  time,  informing  it,  giving  it  consistency 
and  content.  As  eternity  does  not  signify  a  distant  time, 
past  or  future,  so  it  does  not  signify  everlastingness,  but 
the  continuity  and  permanence  of  the  worthful  amid  the 
mutations  and  illusions  of  the  temporal.  Thus,  as  the 
Divine  is  in  all  cause  and  all  space,  so  is  it  in  all  time,  on 
which  account  the  latter,  no  less  than  the  former,  has 
become  inwardized  and  spiritualized.  From  this  it  is 
but  a  step  to  the  position  that  values  have  undergone  trans- 
valuation  and  transference.  The  old  religious  conviction 
expected  genuine  happiness  only  in  the  hereafter.  This 
world  had  value  only  in  so  far  as  it  prepared  for  that. 
Without  a  country  here,  the  saint's  fatherland  was  the 
heavenly  Beyond.  Now  the  new  secular  goods  have  dis- 
placed the  old  sacred,  in  a  large  degree.  The  goods,  even  of 
a  spiritual  kind,  have  been  retracted  from  "heaven"  to  earth. 
Man  seeks  to  develop  his  resident  energies  in  the  work  of 
this  life.  The  task  of  keying  together  the  manifold  of  his 
nature  into  the  whole  of  a  moral  personality  is  attended 
to  now.  Along  with  the  transition  from  the  old  tran- 
scendent to  the  modern  immanent  eternity,  awakening, 
animation,  intensification  of  the  entire  humanity  have  been 
characteristic  of  the  new  regime.  Science  and  art  have 
found  measureless  possibilities.  The  state  becomes  what 
the  Germans  call  a  Kidturstaat,  seeking  independence  of 
the  church.  Nations  grow  to  spiritual  individualities,  and 
attain  to  high  spiritual  and  moral  power.  Especially  has 
the  drawing  down  of  goods  from  heaven  to  earth,  from 
eternity  above  time  to  eternity  in  time,  inspired  the  great 
social  movement,  with  its  strenuous  and  invincible  endeavor 
to  accord  property,  culture,  and  the  enjoyment  of  life  to 
every  individual.  All  this,  and  such  as  this,  tends  to  make 
this  world  the  complete  and  exclusive  world  of  man.  There 
is  the  passing  of  the  depreciation  of  material  goods,  peculiar 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  173 


to  the  former  mode  of  thought.  At  present  they  seem 
to  have  become  indispensable  for  the  development  even 
of  spiritual  energies.  Religious  hope  of  a  life  beyond  pales 
before  a  faith  in  a  glorious  future  on  this  side.  The  total 
result  of  all  these  movements  is  the  establishment  of  man  in 
the  circle  of  the  secular  life,  from  which  it  had  been 
once  supposed  that  it  was  the  main  function  of  religion 
to  extricate  him.  Now,  admitting  peril  here,  certainly 
much  that  may  well  be  matter  for  grave  misgivings — to  be 
taken  up  in  the  next  chapter — the  production  and  discovery 
of  values  here  and  now  on  this  bank  and  shoal  of  time 
do  not  evacuate  the  hereafter  of  its  worthful  content; 
nor  does  the  fillinor  of  human  vocations  and  institutions 
with  energy  and  value  unfit  humanity,  for  the  untried  and 
unknown  experiences  of  the  immortal  life.  And  it  is  a 
distinct  gain  that  the  old  ecclesiastical  dualism,  the  worst  of 
all  dualisms,  between  "joyless  labor"  here  and  "laborless 
joy"  there,  should  be  overcome;  that  as  no  person,  so  also 
no  period  of  time,  should  be  treated  as  mere  means  to 
an  end,  no  past  or  present  as  mere  means  to  a  future; 
but  that,  as  "there  come  up  the  stream  murmurs  and  scents 
from  the  infinite  sea,"  so  every  moment  should  have  an  inde- 
pendent and  worthy  existence  of  its  own,  because  filled  with 
its  own  share  of  eternity.  Moreover,  if  values  be  here,  the 
criterion  of  values  must  be  here,  and  not  simply  at  the 
"judgment  day":  "the  history  of  the  world  is  the  judgment 
of  the  world,"  as  Schiller  said. 

To  this  change  in  conviction  touching  time  and  eternity 
must  be  supplied  the  change  as  regards  "historical  facts" 
at  particular  points  of  time  and  salvation.  The  old  super- 
naturalistic  conception  paradoxically  held  at  once  that 
Christianity  was,  strictly  speaking,  anti-historical  and  yet 
founded  on  historical  facts!  The  divine  and  the  eternal 
miraculously  broke  into  the  time-series  at  a  special  point,  or 


174   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

points.  Orthodox-ecclesiastical  thought  restricted  thus  the' 
redemptive  efficiency  to  past  deeds,  past  facts,  past  "reve- 
lations," past  persons,  in  a  way  that  is  little  short  of  a 
species  of  atheism;  that  is,  at  all  events,  apparently  a 
polytheistic  survival.  If  God  is  God  of  the  living  and 
not  of  the  dead,  he  is  eternal  and  omnipresent  in  all  history, 
and  his  revelation  is  to  be  found,  not  simply  in  documents 
of  a  dead  past,  but  in  the  living  present.  Indeed,  nothing 
in  the  past  that  is  in  the  past  only,  and  not  also  in  the 
present,  saves  the  human  soul  today.' 

Furthermore,  according  to  the  old  faith,  the  divine 
and  eternal,  entering  thus  into  time,  controlling  its  entire 
further  course,  itself  remained  unchangeable.  But  the 
modern  scientific  idea  of  development,  with  its  ceaseless 
progress,  makes  truth  a  child  of  its  time.  Truth,  to  do 
its  work,  must  correspond  to  a  given  situation;  all  insti- 
tutions, norms,   ideals,   criteria,   convictions,    must    undergo 

1  Rudolf  Eucken,  one  of  the  foremost  living  philosophers,  in  his  book 
entitled  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion,  depicts  this  aspect  of  the  modern  situation  so 
impressively  that  I  cannot  deny  myself  the  privilege  of  transcribing  the  relevant 
paragraph  here  :  "The  new  critical  mode  of  thought  manifests  itself  first  of  all  in  a 
profound  change  of  attitude  to  history.  Therefore  it  is  felt  at  a  point  of  the 
highest  importance  for  an  historical  religion.  The  demand  for  the  expulsion  of  all 
subjective  addition  and  for  the  naked  exposure  of  the  exact  state  of  the  case 
produces  a  harsh  collision  with  the  old,  sacred  tradition.  This  tradition  had  been 
previously  accepted  unhesitatingly  as  pure  truth.  But  it  now  becomes  a  mere 
picture  (Bild),  a  problematic  phenomenon,  a  mirroring  of  facts  in  the  subject, 
nay,  in  a  whole  series  of  subjects.  Not  merely  error,  but  "tendency"  also,  although 
unconsciously,  has  corrupted  much  here.  Often  there  is  a  wide  gulf  between 
picture  and  fact.  It  requires  a  conscientious  and  methodic  investigation  to 
get  at  the  truth  here.  Historical  criticism  grows  up.  Ultimately  it  must  be 
applied  to  religious  tradition  also.  It  must  correct  the  traditional  picture 
at  many  points.  Where  there  was  once  thought  to  be  an  harmonious  whole, 
the  sharp  observer  now  discovers  great  deviations  and  contradictions. 
This  is  true,  not  only  in  collateral  matters  and  single  data,  but  in  fundamental 
things;  e.  g.,  the  New  Testament  contains  fundamentally  dilfereut  portraits  of 
Jesus,  opposite  conceptions  of  Christianity.  That  which  was  the  main  thing  to 
the  faith  of  a  later  time  is  not  seldom  wanting  in  the  classic  documents,  or 
else  is  there  only  in  slightest  beginnings.  An  unprejudiced  examination  cannot 
be  blind  to  the  wide  gulf  between  ecclesiastical  dogma  and  the  Bible.  Add  to 
this  now  the  question  of  the  genuineness  of  sources,  with  its  discussions,  now 
passionate,  now  microscopic.  The  important  thing  is  not  whether  criticism  should 
turn  out  to  be  positive  or  negative,  but  that  it  should  be  thought  that  the  tradition 
requires  scientific  criticism  at  all  in  order  to  its  trustworthiness.    The  Divine  is  no 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  175 

continuous  metamorphosis  conformably  to  the  requirements 
of  a  living  present.  A  truth  once  true  is  not  on  that 
account  true  forever;  a  good  once  good  is  not  on  that 
account  good  forever;  "whatever  is,  is  right,"  until  some- 
thing better  is  possible,  whereupon  the  old  right  becomes 
immediately  wrong.  That  which  suffices  for  its  own  time 
just  on  that  account  cannot  suffice  for  all  time.  How  great 
a  change  is  this  from  the  static  truths,  the  static  norms,  the 
static  right,  of  the  old  static  world!  This  new  conviction 
must  stigmatize  every  fixation  of  a  content  of  thought  and 
of  faith  as  an  intolerable  yoke.  All  tying  down  of  life 
to  the  models  and  goods  of  a  particular  time  becomes, 
in  the  long  run,  a  vain  damming  back  of  the  inexhaustible 
floods  of  life.  To  erect  evolution  into  a  fundamental 
law  of  history  is  to  proclaim  the  fluidity  of  all  spiritual 
magnitudes,  to  relativize  truth,  and  to  obliterate  all  static 
finalities  or  absolutes  from  life.  Can  religion  forego  such 
absoluteness  and  unchangeability   of   its  truth?     Can  the 

longer  naively  accepted.  It  is  appropriated  only  by  man's  painstaking  labor 
of  thought.  His  reflecting  and  reasoning  destroy  irrevocably  the  halo  of  sanctity 
■which  formerly  enveloped  the  biblical  tradition.  The  glaring  daylight  of  critical 
illumination  unmercifully  chases  away  the  dreamy  twilight  in  which  the  religious 
fantasy  spun  wondrous  threads  between  heaven  and  earth.  Thus  religion  loses 
in  just  the  measure  that  history  gains.  Prec4se  inspection  itself,  the  accurate 
fixing  of  a  special  time,  this  necessary  result  of  a  critical  mode  of  thought,  is 
unfavorable  to  an  historical  religion.  It  hinders  the  blending  of  one's  own  life 
with  that  of  a  disparate  age.  Thus  Protestantism  can  no  longer  pass  as  a  simple 
restoration  of  primitive  Christianity. 

'"But  this  upheaval  of  the  historical  basis  of  the  religious  life  reaches  still 
farther.  History  in  general  no  longer  seems  fit  to  be  the  basis  of  religion.  For  the 
thought  to  which  the  modern  world  delivers  up  the  guidance  of  its  life  is  not  able  to 
acknowledge  history  as  the  fountain  of  eternal  truths.  Such  truth  must  be  capable 
of  immediate  realization.  It  must  offer  itself  to  everyone  and  to  every  age.  Then  it 
must  be  founded  in  the  timeless  nature  of  reason.  However  deeply  an  occurrence 
of  the  past  may  enter  into  the  historical  order,  and  persist  to  our  day,  it  does  not  on 
that  account  become  a  part  of  our  own  life.  We  cannot  immediately  experience  it. 
We  cannot  even  test  its  validity.  We  cannot  transform  it  into  a  personal 
possession.  But,  according  to  our  modern  convictions,  religious  truths  require 
precisely  this,  above  all  else."  (P.  31.)  The  reader  may  remember  that  Kant, 
too,  said  this  a  cencury  ago:  "That  historical  faith  is  duty  and  belongs  to  salvation 
is  superstition."  To  which  I  wish  to  add  with  emphasis:  Criticism  is  not  properly 
called  destructive  or  constructive,  negative  or  positive,  but  true  or  false.  If  the 
latter,  let  it  be  corrected;  if  the  former,  then  what  one  does  about  it  depends  upon 
what  sort  of  man  one  is. 


176    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

Divine  partake  of  the  flux  and  change  of  time  without  being 
belittled  and  destroyed?  And  can  man,  doomed  to 
absorption  in  the  process  of  becoming,  and  in  the  tasks 
of  time,  still  yearn  for  a  kingdom  of  eternity  ? 

Finally,  reference  may  be  made  to  the  self-dependence  of 
the  time-series,  according  to  the  new  view  of  the  world  and  of 
life — self-dependence  and  self -development  of  the  world  of 
time  as  of  the  world  of  space.  The  bearers  of  the  new  faith 
still  speak  of  God ;  but  is  there  a  path  from  nature,  as  con- 
ceived by  the  modern  man,  to  God?  Where  is  there  room 
for  God  in  an  infinite  world  self-dependent,  self-developing, 
self -lawgiving  ?  Do  we  find  anything  which  does  not  belong 
to  world,  to  nature,  and  to  history  ?  What  is  there  for  God 
to  do,  if  all  that  takes  place  in  the  world  does  so  according 
to  resident  forces  and  eternal  laws,  and  if,  according  to  the 
conservation  of  energy,  the  sum  of  these  forces  cannot  be 
increased  or  diminished?  Is  not  this  world  entirely  self- 
sufficient,  with  its  own  laws  of  development,  by  which  it  is 
led  in  its  infinite  evolution  according  to  inviolable  law  ?  Cer- 
tainly, as  the  "supernatural"  is  excluded  by  the  new  cosmol- 
ogy, so  the  superhistorical  is  excluded  by  the  new  history. 
Motive  power  of  its  own  is  recognized  within  the  domain  of 
the  human  and  historical;  goals  of  its  own  are  designated; 
phenomena  are  directly  concatenated,  and  ultimately  com- 
bined into  a  single  great  system.  Every  special  performance 
is  to  be  understood  from  the  standpoint  of  this  system.  The 
supreme  endeavor  is  not  construed  as  an  isolated  miracle, 
but  as  a  climax  of  a  continuous  movement,  as  issuing  from 
universal  conditions  and  surroundings.  It  is  clear  that  this 
rejection  of  the  encroachment  of  transcendental  powers  is  a 
decisive  opposition  to  the  traditional  religion.  But  it  may 
not  be  to  all  religion,  since  the  negation  of  miracle  is  not 
eo  ipso  the  negation  of  God.  Still,  the  questions  raised 
above  are  sufficient  to  indicate  what  a  profound  change  the 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  177 

traditional  God-idea  must  undergo,  if  it  is  to  be  retained  as 
a  constitutent  of  the  new  view  of  the  world.  "God  is  dead!" 
cried  Nietzsche.'  In  a  sense  that  is  true;  but  he  dies  to 
live.  Meaning  to  postpone  naturalistic  monism  till  the  next 
chapter,  I  but  briefly  revert  to  the  thought  expressed  already 
in  discussing  the  world  of  space.  A  God  outside  the  cosmos 
is  dead.  And  it  may  very  well  be  that,  as  the  quarrel 
between  materialism  and  idealism  has  turned  out  to  be  mostly 
a  mere  matter  of  words,  so  the  contrast  between  the  theistic 
conception  and  the  cosmic  conception,  in  modern  religious 
thought,  may  likewise  be  verbal.  But  if  this  be  true,  it  is 
only  because  the  poverty  of  the  ecclesiastical  cosmos  has 
yielded  to  its  enrichment  with  all  the  ethical  and  rational 
values,  to  its  qualification  with  all  the  ontological  attributes, 
and  to  its  equipment  with  all  the  physical  energies,  which 
were  predicated  of  the  transcendent  God  of  the  old  world- 
scheme.  But  if  a  rose  by  any  other  name  would  be  as  sweet, 
so  would  God;  all  the  more  so,  since  he  does  not  care  by 
what  name  we  name  him,  but  only  that  we  do  his  will  and 
receive  his  grace.  Thus,  if  the  modern  man  no  longer 
believes  in  the  trinitarian  God  of  mediaeval  dualism;  if  he 
has  learned  that  such  a  conception,  which  the  church  yet 
calls  Christian,  is  foreign  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  and  is 
more  like  the  neo-Platonic  philosophy  than  like  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount,  he  does  believe,  for  all  that,  in  the  living  God 
of  the  gospel,  however  differently  conceived,  whose  all-embra- 
cing activity  is  consummated  as  an  omnipresent  principle  of 
the  order  in  nature — the  world  of  space — and  as  the  supreme 

1  With  equal  propriety  Nietzsche  could  have  said :  "  Man  is  dead !  "  for  the  man 
who  was  the  correlate  of  the  God  of  whom  Nietzsche  was  thinking  is  dead.  Things 
became  different  within  their  development.  So  with  man,  consciousness  and  energy 
of  will  are  transformed;  a  new  psychological  capacity  is  developed.  Seethe  masterly 
treatment  of  this  subject  in  Dilthey,  "Ueber  oberrheinische  Gedankenbildungen 
im  Zeitalter  der  Reformation;"  also,  Harnack,  "Ueber  die  Bedeutungder  Reforma- 
tion," Christliche  Welt,  1899.  Bonus  elaborates  the  thought  with  specific  applica- 
tion to  Germany  in  the  Christliche  Welt  of  the  same  year:  "Zur  Germanisierung  des 
Christentums." 


178    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

law  of  the  good  in  history,  in  the  moral  world — the  world  of 
time. 

What  is  the  attitude  of  the  new  philosophy  to  the  tradi- 
tional religion?  As  we  have  seen,  our  heritage  from  the 
eighteenth  century  is,  among  other  things,  a  new  view  of 
nature;  from  the  nineteenth  century,  a  new  view  of  history. 
The  ground  was  washed  away  from  under  the  old  religious 
conceptions  by  both  views.  "But  perhaps" — so  it  might  be 
proposed — "religion  can  find  refuge,  during  the  march  of 
events  and  changes,  in  the  inner  sanctuary  of  the  soul,  and 
maintain  there  securely  its  old-time  relations  to  supramun- 
dane  powers."  But  the  assault  of  the  new  culture  has  pressed 
on  into  this  innermost  citadel  of  all,  on  which  account  it 
would  seem  that  religion,  as  hitherto  understood,  had  lost 
final  foothold,  and  that  dissolution  was  unavoidable.  Let  us 
see  how  the  case  stands  at  this  decisive  point. 

We  are  now  concerned  with  the  inner  nature  of  man 
which  lies  at  the  base  of  religion.  In  primitive  religions, 
life  of  a  spiritual  kind  consisted,  first  of  all,  in  an  intercourse 
and  self-communication  between  man  and  man ;  but,  secondly, 
with  powers  outside  and  above  our  human  region — powers, 
however,  which  were  shaped  anthropomorphically,  man  thus 
appropriating  them  for  his  own  use.  Thus  man  communed 
with  a  soul-like  nature,  apparently  akin  to  himself,  filled 
with  psychic  forces.  This  was  held  to  be  true  of  nature 
singly  and  as  a  whole.  The  gods  of  the  older  religions  were 
only  larger  men;  and  intercourse  among  them  was  like  that 
among  men.  Of  course,  a  certain  moralization  of  the  gods 
followed  upon  the  moralization  of  men.  But  even  with  the 
uplifting  of  Deity  to  a  moral  ideal,  no  breach  with  the  human 
mode  of  life  ensued;  rather,  the  immediate  condition  of  man, 
his  psychic  competency,  remained  the  fundamental  standard 
which  controlled  all  reality,  even  the  ideas  concerning  what 
was  revered  as  superhuman.    Far-seeing  and  profound  spirits 


The  Changed  View  of  the  Wokld  179 

could  not  escape  the  limitations  of  the  whole,  though  many 
tried  hard  to  lift  the  idea  of  God  above  the  concepts  of  the 
merely  human,  and  the  religious  above  what  Spinoza  calls 
the  "affects"  of  the  merely  human.  But,  on  the  whole,  reli- 
gious matters  remained  at  the  old  standpoint  till  the  modern 
period  effected  a  great  revolution  of  life. 

One  prime  feature  of  the  primitive  view  of  things  was  the 
uninterrupted  connection  between  man  and  the  world,  an 
easy  flowing  over  of  life  from  the  one  side  to  the  other. 
Psychical  and  natural,  inner  and  outer,  were  not  yet  differ- 
entiated. The  interior  of  each  bore  a  good  part  of  that  of 
the  other.  But  the  modern  period  came  to  feel  that  such 
compact  was  surreptitious  and  even  impossible.  To  this 
reaction  there  appeared  to  be  a  gulf  between  man  and  man's 
surroundings.  The  contrast  between  the  two  came  to  be 
uppermost  in  human  consciousness.  But  primacy  was 
shifted  from  environment  to  man,  from  object  to  subject. 
Kant  proclaimed  the  sublimity  of  the  spirit  above  nature. 
The  starting-point  in  life  lay  in  the  subject.  Everything 
unfolds  from  the  subject.  But,  at  the  same  time,  the  great 
world  remained  inwardly  present;  to  forego  it  entirely 
seemed  impossible.  Hence  a  pathway  from  subject  to  object 
had  to  be  found.  The  lost  external  possessions  had  to  be 
won  anew.  How  was  this  to  be  done  ?  What  belonged 
merely  to  the  particularity  of  the  subject,  to  its  subjectivity, 
was  to  be  rigidly  kept  aloof  from  outer  things,  and  excluded 
from  the  image  and  idea  of  outer  things.  The  soul  could 
win  back  the  estranged  world  only  in  case  it  contained  in 
itself  a  world-force;  i.  e.,  in  case  it  was  able  to  set  up  an 
impersonal,  affectionless,  objective  activity.  The  modern 
world  believed  that  it  had  actually  lit  upon  such  a  world- 
force,  such  an  activity,  and  that  it  was  thinking^  thought  — 
thought  disengaged  from  all  human  desires,  and  akin  to 
things  therefore.     How  accurate  and  unerrino-  nature's  activ- 


180   The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

ities  are !  So  said  Newton,  and  Descartes  and  his  school. 
If  only  there  was  in  man  such  a  mechanism,  a  nature — but 
called  mind!  —  acting  with  nature's  inerrancy,  then  the  dis- 
integration of  such  old  absolutes  as  an  infallible  church  and 
an  infallible  book  could  be  easily  endured.  Then  a  Spinoza 
could  write  even  ethics  with  geometrical  precision. 

And  so  it  was  thought  which  reunited  man  with  the 
world.  It  was  the  work  of  thought  which  built  up  for  man 
again  a  new,  truer  life.  It  was  before  the  forum  of  pure 
thought  that  all  else  must  make  good  its  claim  to  reality. 
Clear  and  distinct  thought — this  must  yield  what  is  true  for 
the  future.  Whereupon  the  rummaging,  and  criticising,  and 
sifting  of  the  whole  traditional  life  began.  Everything 
must  be  tested,  as  by  fire,  by  this  new  absolute,  by  this 
pre-Kantian  primacy  of  "The  Theoretical  Reason;"  and 
whatever  cannot  stand  this  test  must  be  remorselessly  ban- 
ished. There  was  no  need  of  so  many  absolutes :  mechanical 
church,  mechanical  book,  mechanical  thought — competition 
for  first  honors  was  inevitable ;  and  this  was  the  period  when 
clear  and  distinct  thought — "clear"  and  "distinct,"  these 
were  the  great  adjectives — was  to  have  its  "innings."  The 
beginning  of  a  new  epoch  of  spiritual  life  was  unmistakable. 
The  old,  naive  kind  of  life  is  now  definitively  overcome.  Life 
no  longer  rests  on  immediate  impressions  of  the  senses,  or 
on  historic  authorities,  but  on  thought  alone.  A  rational 
culture,  an  age  of  reason,  begins;  it  is  the  demands  of 
thought  which  now  control  human  activity  and  give  it 
direction. 

This  exaltation  of  thought  above  sensibility  affected  the 
form  of  the  old  life  first;  afterward  the  content  as  well. 
There  was  a  dislocation  of  relationship  between  sense  and 
spirit.  The  center  was  transferred  to  within  the  life  of  the 
human  spirit.  Instead  of  the  sensible  being  an  essential 
constituent  of  life,  it  was  treated  rather  as  a  mere  manifes- 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  181 


tation  and  representation  of  processes  of  thought.  It  was 
not  the  immediate  impression  and  enjoyment  of  the  sensible, 
but  its  service  of  the  ends  of  thought,  or  its  enhancement  of 
the  spiritual  life,  that  now  seemed  of  real  worth.  For 
example,  formerly  a  sensible  element  belonged  to  the  com- 
pleteness of  an  act.  Legal  business  was  not  valid  without  a 
sharply  defined  act  perceptible  to  the  senses.  Political 
authority  was  ex  cathedra,  in  some  special  place,  as  imperial 
dignity  in  the  city  of  Rome,  The  idea  of  the  state  was  not 
separated  from  the  personality  of  the  ruler.  So  with  trade 
and  traffic,  so  with  various  branches  of  toil  of  the  human 
spirit — dependence  on  the  sensible.  Everywhere  the  sen- 
sible was  no  indifferent  sign  or  symbol,  but  an  indispensable 
and  solid  constituent  of  life.  Noiv  the  modern  period  con- 
summates an  emancipation  of  the  spiritual  from  such  con- 
straint and  dependency.  Everywhere  there  was  a  turning 
away  from  the  sensible  to  thought,  idea,  ideal.  Even  nature 
became  a  system  of  invisible  forces  and  laws.  Even  state 
and  society  became  magnitudes  of  thought,  which  developed 
consequences  and  made  claims  from  the  necessity  of  their 
concepts.     And  man  comes  to  himself  in  his  thought. 

Now,  religion  could  not  escape  the  effects  of  so  important 
a  change.  The  traditional  religion  was  rudely  shocked. 
We  must  bear  in  mind  that  at  the  downfall  of  antiquity, 
Christianity  experienced  an  intimate,  an  apparently  insepa- 
rable, amalgamation  of  the  spiritual  and  the  sensible.  This 
amalgamation — a  welcome  foothold  against  painful  doubt 
to  the  ancients — became  an  indispensable  means  for  the 
spiritual  education  of  the  peoples  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
Reformation  began  to  make  the  spiritual  more  free.  But  it 
was  from  conduct  and  personal  conviction,  rather  than  from 
the  central  doctrines,  that  it  lifted  the  sensible.  It  meant  a 
terrible  shaking  up  for  Catholicism  especially,  but  also  for 
all  ecclesiastical  Christianity,  when  the  modern  period  took 


182    The  Finality  op  the  Cheistian  Religion 

up  and  carried  through  to  a  finish  this  changed  relation 
between  the  spiritual  and  the  sensible.  For  precisely  the 
main  doctrines  of  traditional  Christianity  thus  lose  their 
inner  support  and  necessity.  Thus,  for  example,  the  doctrine 
of  the  redemption  of  humanity  by  the  blood  of  Christ;  the 
doctrine  of  the  bodily  resurrection  as  a  condition  of  immor- 
tality; the  doctrine  of  sacraments,  binding,  as  they  do, 
spiritual  efPects  down  to  sensible  processes;  the  doctrine  of 
the  visible  church  as  an  essential  part  of  religion.  All  this, 
and  such  as  this,  seemed  to  the  modern  mode  of  thought  an 
expression  of  a  stage  of  life  which  was  now  overcome.  The 
old  faith  fastened  the  full  reality  of  religious  processes  to 
the  sensible,  saw  their  convincing  proof  in  the  sensible;  the 
new  thought  came  to  look  upon  the  sensible  as  hindrance 
and  repression  of  that  spiritual  substance  which  had  to 
prove  its  actuality  by  its  own  energy.  What  the  old  mode 
valued  as  deepest  religion,  the  new  treated  as  mythology. 

But  what  amounted  to  the  greatest  assault  and  danger 
for  the  traditional  religion  was  the  dissolution,  or  at  least 
the  dissipation,  of  the  center  of  the  life  of  the  human  spirit. 
This  signified  an  inner  transformation  of  the  life-process 
which  resulted  in  an  entirely  new  idea  of  reality  and  in 
a  depreciation  of  all  previous  values.  As  it  was  peculiar  to 
the  old,  deep-seated  view  to  relate  every  property  or  quality 
of  matter  to  a  fixed  substance,  so,  similarly,  every  human 
experience  and  act  was  related  to  a  substance,  a  fixed 
center,  called  a  soul;  to  an  ego  which  felt  and  strove; 
to  an  entity  which  was  the  agent  and  bearer  of  consciousness. 
This  controversy  over  the  substance  of  the  soul  awakened 
great  interest  in  France  and  England,  As  man  viewed 
himself,  the  inner  reality,  as  substance,  so  he  looked 
upon  the  outer  reality  from  the  same  point  of  view.  Indeed, 
the  supreme  reality  of  God  was  conceived  in  the  same  way 
— as  substance,  a  fixed  center  of  attributes.  Personality 
was  substance. 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  183 

But  this  is  not  all.  In  harmony  with  the  old  type,  the 
magnitudes  and  contrasts  which  excite  the  personal, 
especially  those  of  good  and  evil,  became  world-ruling 
agencies.  A  life  of  subjective  passions  radiated  from 
man  into  all  reality.  As  man,  so  all  besides.  But  all  this 
was  now  changed.  To  the  modern  demand  for  secular  life 
all  this  was  narrow  and  insufferable.  There  came  to  be  a 
direct  entrance  into  the  breadth  and  truth  of  things. 
There  was  a  necessity  for  the  energetic  expulsion  of  all 
turgid  subjectivity.  There  was  an  heroic  emancipation 
from  the  old  personal  and  affectional  form  of  life.  There 
was  a  warfare  of  man  against  that  which  had  hitherto  been 
valued  as  his  deepest  essence,  but  which  now  was  degraded 
to  a  lower  stage  and  a  most  painful  hindrance. 

Nothing  but  thought,  however,  could  effect  such  an 
emancipation.  Hence  thought  is  detached  from  the  soul- 
life,  becomes  self-activity  on  its  own  resources,  is  transformed 
into  a  process,  without  any  agent  or  bearer  but  itself. 
"Process" — that  is  the  magic  word  of  the  modern  period.. 
Psychology  no  longer  studies  a  soul-substance  in  which 
faculties  inhere,  but  describes  a  progressive  synthesis  of 
experience.  Theology  is  no  longer  the  science  of  a  Grod- 
substance  in  which  attributes  are  infixed ;  for  God  is  no  longer 
Being,  but  Becoming.  All  the  multitude  of  static  entities, 
excluding  each  other,  have  widened  out  into  process.  And 
so  psychic  activity  was  cut  loose  from  a  soul-substance; 
God-activity,  from  a  God-substance;  world-activity,  from  a 
world-substance.  The  old  soul,  the  old  God,  the  old  world, 
were  gone.  Process,  laws,  methods — these  take  their 
place.  No  wonder  violent  controversies  arose  in  Germany, 
which  led  to  the  dissolution  of  the  Hegelian  school ;  contro- 
versies which  turned  essentially  on  the  personality  of  God 
and  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  And  it  must  be  admitted, 
I  think,  that  had  this  new  culture  remained  at  this  stage, 


184   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

it  would  have  clashed,  not  simply  with  the  traditional  form 
of  Christianity,  but  with  the  entire  nature  of  Christianity. 
The  very  peculiarity  of  Christianity  is  that  it  exalts  psychic 
internality  to  a  self-dependent  world,  and  makes  this  world 
the  center  of  all  reality.  If  this  internality  is,  not  the  goal, 
but  the  secondary  by-product,  of  cosmic  processes,  the 
ground  is  taken  away  from  under  Christianity.  Hence  the 
controversy  over  personality  becomes  a  matter  of  life  and 
death  for  Christianity.  It  suffices  to  mention  but  one 
important  particular.  Religion,  in  the  old  faith,  was 
conceived  as  communion  between  the  soul  and  God;  and 
this  might  very  well  be,  if  God  is  a  personal  substance  and  the 
soul  is  a  personal  substance.  But  with  God  resolved  into  a 
process  of  becoming,  and  the  soul  resolved  into  a  progress- 
ive synthesis  of  experience — itself  a  passing  moment  in  the 
dialectic  process  of  reality,  a  fleeting  thought  of  the  Thought 
— then  the  conception  of  religion  as  communion  between 
man  and  God  must  be  abandoned;  for  from  such  a  point 
of  view  all  the  old  possibilities  of  personal  relationships — 
love  and  grace,  faith  and  confidence — become  mere  anthro- 
pomorphisms. Inasmuch  as  the  movement  which  began  in 
driving  the  soul-life  from  nature,  in  the  mechanicization  of 
nature,  ended  in  driving  the  soul-life  from  man,  in  the 
mechanicization  of  man,  it  becomes  clear  that,  not  this  or 
that  religion,  not  this  or  that  morality,  but  religion  and 
morality  in  general  must  perish  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
if  the  fact  and  right  of  personality  cannot  be  maintained 
over  against  the  conception  of  reality  as  thought,  and 
that  thought  as  deterministic  process. 

Postponing  the  question  of  naturalism,  into  which  this 
development  empties,  till  the  next  chapter,  mention  may 
be  made  here  of  the  way  in  which  Personality  has  come  to 
its  rights  over  against  "logical"  evolution,  or,  for  that 
matter,  evolution  in  its  entirety.     It  is  not,  however,  that 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  185 

the  idea  of  process  and  of  evolution  was  surrendered.  It  is 
not  that  its  merit  has  not  been  great.  It  has.  If  it  be 
asked — and  in  saying  this  I  but  epitomize  my  whole 
contention  again — why,  contrary  to  the  manifest  intention 
of  the  Founder,  the  religion  of  Jesus  soon  took  its  place 
among  the  authority-religions  of  the  old  world,  why  it 
lost  its  original  path  and  supported  itself  on  external 
authority — tradition,  pope,  or  book — the  answer  is  that 
it  is  because  reality  —  i.  e.,  matter,  soul,  God — was  subsumed 
under  the  category  of  substance,  which  was  thought  to 
be  static.  The  static  was  authoritative  in  science  and 
morality  and  religion.  Being  static,  it  was  final,  absolute. 
Thus  the  finality,  the  absoluteness,  of  the  Christian  religion 
could  be  easily  held  in  that  old  world  of  the  static  absolute. 
So,  too,  rationalism,  with  its  system  of  static  concepts,  innate 
and  logical,  had  the  presuppositions  for  adhering  to 
the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion.  Rationalism  and 
orthodoxy,  in  the  last  analysis,  are  one;  each  has  its  static 
finality ;  and  the  static  in  the  case  of  each  comes  under  the 
head  of  intellectualism.  But — let  it  be  repeated — what  a 
great,  world-historical  change  has  taken  place!  The 
Platonic,  mediaeval,  rationalistic  world  of  the  static  —  the 
Hegelian,  Darwinian  world  of  process,  becoming,  evolution 
—  how  great  the  contrast!  In  principle,  the  religion  of 
authority  has  already  yielded  to  the  religion  of  the  moral 
consciousness  of  man,  the  might  of  force  to  the  might 
of  ideals.  This  is  the  great  merit  partly  of  the  movement 
of  thought  just  outlined.  Very  well,  then.  Is,  now,  the 
conviction  of  the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion  tenable  in 
this  new  world  of  ours,  where  the  fixed  has  yielded  to 
flux,  being  to  becoming,  absoluteness  to  relativity,  force  to 
ideals  ?  Having  seen  that  Christianity  is  no  longer  absolute 
as  a  religion  of  authority  in  a  world  of  static  entities,  can  it 
be   shown  that  it  is   absolute   as   a   religion   of  ideals  in  a 


186    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

world  of  evolution  and  immanence?  That  is  the  great 
problem. 

Not  if  there  be  no  ideals.  And  there  are  no  ideals  if 
there  be  no  personalities.  But  precisely  the  correction  which 
recent  times  have  administered  to  Hegelianism  is  the  insight 
that  the  essence  of  spirit  is  not  thought,  but  will,  and  that  the 
concept  of  personality  must  be  supplied  to  that  of  evolution. 

It  is  due  partly  to  the  influence  emanating  from  Kant's 
Primacy  of  the  Practical  Reason,  partly  to  Romanticism, 
partly  to  Schopenhauer,  and  partly  to  the  new  voluntaristic 
psychology,  as  well  as  to  the  modern  preponderance  of 
interest  in  the  practical  as  against  the  contemplative  life,  that 
will  is  now  held  to  be  the  final  fact  in  human  nature,  and 
man's  active  faculties  more  primary  than  his  thinking 
powers.  ^  Among  psychologists  there  is  quite  general  agree- 
ment today  that  (a)  a  living  being  is  first  immediately  con- 
scious of  its  own  self  as  a  being  pleasurably  or  painfully 
influenced  by  outside  things,  and  gets  in  this  ieeiing  judg- 
ments of  value  and  impulses  of  ivill  which  immediately  issue 
therefrom;  (6)  an  idea  of  the  character  of  what  it  is  that 
influences  it,  and  an  impulse  to  know  the  source  of  this 
influence  more  accurately,  arise  only  secondarily.  This 
objective  consciousness,  unfolding  from  a  "big  buzzing  con- 
fusion" on  to  concepts,  begets  of  itself  no  impulse  of  will, 
but  can  only  guide  the  will  which  determines  of  itself  it.j 
own  goal.  Even  the  impulse  to  knowledge  on  and  up  to  its 
highest  form  is,  without  doubt,  originally  awakened  and 
guided  by  practical  motives.  Thus  the  essence  of  us  is 
forward-strivingf  to  a  sroal  which  the  will  itself  wills.  Ideas 
are  like  signboards,  auxiliary  and  instrumental,  as  we  go  on 
our  destined  way,  but  do  not  supply  either  the  energy  for  the 
journey  or  the  values  at  the  goal.     The  energy  and  the  value 

1  Knowledge  for  the  sake  of  knowledge,  truth  for  truth's  sake — this  is  elliptic, 
and  means  knowledge  for  the  sake  of  the  worth  of  knowledge,  truth  for  the  sake  of 
the  ivorth  of  truth. 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  187 

are  not  knowledge,  but  the  will  and  its  goods ;  not  ideas,  but 
ideals  and  their  realization. 

The  immense,  I  will  say  the  epoch-making,  effect  of  this 
new  appreciation  of  the  function  of  the  will  upon  the  fabric 
of  doctrinal  and  practical  Christianity  must  grow  increas- 
ingly manifest  to  all  who  read  the  signs  of  the  times. 

If  intellect  have  primacy  in  man,  knowledge  becomes 
the  chief  good.  Sin  is  error,  a  defect  in  knowledge.  Reli- 
gion becomes  dogma  and  intellectual  adhesion  to  dogma. 
Salvation  consists  in  a  rectification  of  knowledge.  This 
rectification  is  effected  by  the  communication  of  better,  of 
absolutely  certain,  knowledge,  which  is  the  revelation.  But 
the  inerrancy  of  the  book  or  the  infallibility  of  the  pope  is 
the  indispensable  prerequisite  of  the  certainty  of  redemption, 
from  this  whole  standpoint.  It  is  the  standpoint  of  salva- 
tion by  knowledge,  common  to  orthodoxy  and  rationalism, 
to  neo-Platonism  and  Buddhism,  to  Thomas  Aquinas  and 
Hegel.  "Blessed  are  the  rich,  for  they  do  not  need  the 
kinofdom  of  heaven."  But  if  it  be  the  will  to  which  central- 
ity  and  supremacy  belong  in  the  human  spirit,  then  the 
primary  evil  is  not  an  error  of  the  intellect,  but  the  evil 
state  of  the  heart.  And  what  must  be  set  right  is  not  directly 
a  set  of  ideas,  but  the  bent  of  the  will.  The  agency  to  be 
employed  is  not  now  "sound  doctrine,"  so  much  as  sound 
personalities.  As  fire  kindles  fire,  and  not  some  theory  about 
the  nature  of  flame,  so  persons  save  persons.  Thus  revela- 
tion is  the  content  of  holy  personalties  whose  base  and  roots 
are  God,  not  of  sacred  doctrines.  We  are  saved,  not  by 
ideas,  but  by  ideals.  Thus,  too,  the  revelation  which  Jesus 
brought  is  himself ;  and  Kant  was  right  when  he  said  that 
there  was  nothing  good  in  the  world  save  a  good  will  alone. 

In  these  observations  I  but  roughly  specify  a  single  item 
in  the  antithesis  of  the  old  world  and  the  new  as  regards  the 
ideals  of  life.     The  interest  of  neo-Platonism,  c.  g.,  is  per- 


188    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

feet  and  pure  knowledge;  therefore  it  is  directed  to  the 
causality  of  existence,  to  the  ground  of  all  things.  Its  effort 
is  to  abstract  ultimate  principles  from  a  given  multiplicity 
of  phenomena,  and  to  reduce  the  entire  course  of  the  world 
to  permanent  formula.  This  final  formula  is  God.  Astatic 
idea  is  its  absolute.  The  finality  of  the  Christian  religion, 
accordingly,  would  be  the  stability  of  this  idea.  But  the 
interest  of  the  new  world  is  perfect  conduct.  Therefore  it 
is  turned  to  the  future,  is  teleological.  Its  concern  is  to  forge 
values  out  of  the  given  hurly-burly  of  experiences;  not  to 
know,  but  to  receive,  the  Good  that  transcends  all  other 
values.     This  Chief  Good  is  God.     There  rest,  here  motion. 

For  neo-Platonism  the  means  to  the  end  is,  accordingly, 
the  scientific  method,  the  logical  exercise  of  the  understand- 
ing. To  be  sure,  it  is  aware  that  this  means  can  only 
approximately  attain  the  goal;  ecstasy  must  come  in  and  do 
the  rest,  with  its  preliminary  asceticism.  For  the  world  of 
Kant  and  Darwin  the  means  to  the  end  is  faith ;  i.  e.,  not 
a  cognitive  function,  but  a  deed  of  the  will.  Faith  is  produc- 
tive; it  creates  a  world  of  values  on  the  basis  of  a  decisive 
impression,  a  world  which  is  truth  only  to  the  subject. 

Accordingly,  to  the  Greek  world  the  practical  life  of 
man  was  only  auxiliary  to  the  perfect  Gnosis ;  for  our  modern 
biological  point  of  view,  knowledge  is  only  auxiliary  to  the 
perfect  formation  of  character.  For  the  former,  the  active 
moral  life  was  not  in  objective  connection  with  the  supreme 
goal,  but  was  only  secondary  and  subordinate.  Therefore 
contemplation  and,  for  its  sake,  asceticism  had  to  be  put 
above  practical  activity.  But  today  it  is  the  willing  and  doing 
of  the  good  itself  that  is  the  chief  good,  and  world-flight  at 
best  can  only  be  a  pedagogic  means  in  order  to  one's  dominion 
over  the  world,  or  else  an  integral  part  of  that  dominion. 

Furthermore,  that  old  world  was  not  able  to  maintain  its 
ascetic-contemplative  ideal  of  life  as  universally  valid ;  other- 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  189 

wise  it  would  have  had  to  deny  itself  its  rich  world  of  cul- 
ture. Consequently  it  created  a  "twofold  morality" — one 
for  man  as  an  isolated  being,  one  for  man  as  member  of 
society;  one  for  the  philosopher,  one  for  the  man  on  the 
street.  But  the  new  world  has  an  ideal  of  life  only  for  man 
as  a  member  of  society,  and  radically  rejects  any  life  without 
relations  to  others.  Finally,  the  secondary  subordinate  ideal 
of  life — the  practical — the  old  world  sought  to  express  and 
actualize  by  means  of  law;  the  new  world,  by  life,  believing 
that  the  life  will  move  the  will  of  others  to  goodness. 

Primacy  of  the  intellect  in  man ;  the  ascetic-contemplative 
life  the  highest  life;  knowledge  the  chief  good;  dogma,  or 
"sound  doctrine,"  the  essence  of  Christianity  and  the  con- 
tent of  revelation,  such  content  guaranteed  by  infallibility 
of  pope  or  book,  whose  credentials  are  necessarily  miraculous ; 
saving  faith,  first  of  all  holding  things  to  be  true  because 
pope  or  book  says  so,  the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion 
consisting  in  the  miraculously  authenticated  divinity  of  its 
doctrines — this  is  all  of  a  piece,  and  it  all  fits  into  the  old 
Greeco-Roman  and  mediaeval  world,  with  its  static  cosmology, 
and  its  static  empire  and  hierarchy  over  the  spirit.  The 
primacy  of  the  will  in  man;  the  practical-moral  life  the 
highest  life ;  character  the  chief  good ;  ideals  the  essence  of 
the  Christian  religion  and  the  content  of  revelation,  which 
latter  is  the  history  of  great  souls  and  the  soul  of  history ; 
ideals  valued  teleologically  and  not  causally ;  faith  not  assent, 
but  moral  action ;  the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion  in  its 
ideals — this,  too,  is  all  of  a  piece  and  fits  into  the  modern 
dynamic  and  biological  world. 

This  long  chapter,  aiming  to  give  a  comprehensive  sur- 
vey of  the  changed  views  of  the  world  and  of  life,  may  not 
properly  close  without  reference  to  two  other  matters,  I 
refer,  first,  to  the  radical  revolution  of  method  in  both 
science  and  religion.    It  began,  say,  with  Bacon,  and  resulted 


190   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

in  the  collapse  of  the  old  mode  of  procedure.  In  its  very 
germ,  it  contained  the  autonomy  of  science  which  plays  so 
great  a  role  today.  The  new  method  may  be  expressed  in  one 
word:  observation.  It  is  through  observation  that  science 
has  changed  masters.  Formerly  science  was  a  captive  of 
dogma;  now  it  is  a  captive  of  nature.  No  longer  bound  to 
the  formal  doctrine  of  the  church,  it  now  keeps  to  the  con- 
crete doctrine  of  experience.  It  was  deductive;  now  it  is 
inductive.  Formerly  one  subjected  reality  to  the  categories 
of  the  understanding;  now  one  subjects  the  understanding 
in  sovereign  obedience  to  facts.  Formerly  one  said  things 
must  be  so,  therefore  they  are  so;  now  one  says  things  are 
what  they  are,  and  one  looks  at  them  and  into  them  to  see 
what  they  are.  At  the  same  time,  the  old  identification  of 
faith  and  knowledge  was  broken.  The  breach,  scarcely  per- 
ceptible at  first,  grew  swiftly  greater ;  the  nineteenth  century 
finished  it  by  the  great  development  of  experimental  science, 
until  the  breach  became  a  yawning  chasm. 

At  the  outset  it  looked  as  if  there  was  to  be  a  similar 
movement  in  religion.  Luther,  e.  g.,  was  a  man  of  expe- 
rience in  religion,  as  Bacon  in  science.  Indeed,  it  seemed 
at  first  as  if  the  whole  Reformation  was  to  be  a  return  from 
the  age-long  dominant  a  iiriori  procedure  to  direct  observa- 
tion of  religious  facts.  The  Reformation  in  many  ways  was 
a  movement  of  experience.  The  reformers,  to  be  sure,  would 
keep  intact  the  spiritual  authority  of  the  Scriptures,  at  the 
expense  of  the  traditional  authority  of  Catholic  dogma ;  and 
they  also  appealed  to  an  historical  argument,  viz.,  the  out- 
standing superiority  of  the  original  revelation.  But  where, 
ultimately,  did  the  reformers  find  the  guarantee  of  this 
argument  and  the  badge  of  this  superiority  ?  In  personal 
experience.  When  Luther,  in  the  name  of  the  Christian 
conscience,  reinforced  by  the  witness  of  the  Bible,  broke  the 
iron  bands  of  the  papal  system,  he  but  undertook  a  similar 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  191 

work  in  another  region,  and  applied  the  same  method  in 
another  sphere,  that  Bacon,  the  English  philosopher,  intro- 
duced in  science.  Both  Luther  and  Bacon,  each  in  his 
place,  desired  to  be  true  to  the  reality  of  facts.  Therefore 
Bacon  made  what  he  called  profane  science ;  Luther,  what  he 
called  religious  truth,  dependent  on  observation  and  expe- 
rience.    For  both,  action  preceded  knowledge. 

This  experimental  character  of  the  new  religious  move- 
ment, however,  had  the  tragic  misfortune  not  to  understand 
itself  or  to  be  understood — due  to  the  existence  in  statu  quo 
of  the  old  view  of  the  world  in  general.  It  was  soon  lost  in 
a  new  scholasticism,  all  the  more  regrettable  since  it  bore 
the  Protestant  name,  and  was  a  contradiction  to  the  nature 
of  that  very  faith  which  it  expounded.  Science  kept  to  its 
method,  and  has  gone  on  conquering  and  to  conquer;  reli- 
gion did  not,  but  is  belatedly  now  returning  to  it,  after  the 
new  scholasticism  has  succeeded  in  keeping  the  4lite  of  two 
generations  from  Christianity. 

The  second  matter  to  which  I  wish  to  refer  is  the  taking 
up  of  the  spiritual  leadership  of  modern  humanity  by  the 
peoples  of  the  North.  Think  of  the  difference  between  the 
peoples  of  the  North — Germany,  Britain,  America  —  and 
the  peoples  of  the  South — Italy,  Spain,  even  France.  Who 
are  the  people  today  that  have  the  liveliest  part  in  taking 
possession  of  the  world  in  political,  commercial,  and  colonial 
ways  ?  Where  do  you  find  the  greatest  capacity  of  adapta- 
bility, combined  with  the  tensest,  toughest  energy  ?  Where 
are  the  creative  agencies  of  our  civilizations  ?  On  what 
is  our  literature  nourished  ?  Whence  our  philosophy  ? 
Whence  the  new  views  and  the  ruling  ideas  of  our  science  ? 
In  a  word,  whence  the  substance,  the  form,  and  the  tendency 
of  our  thought  ?  The  answer  cannot  be  in  doubt.  There 
was  Charles  Darwin,  with  his  fundamental  thought,  who  has 
fixed  the  spiritual  type  which  is  peculiar  to  the  genius  of 


192    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

the  peoples  of  the  North.  This  type  is  so  little  like  that  of 
the  Greek-Latin  genius  that  it  almost  seems  to  contain  its 
negation.  Let  it  be  repeated:  For  that  old  southern  genius 
all  is  stable,  for  the  northern  all  is  flux;  for  the  southern 
everything  has  become,  for  the  northern  all  is  becoming. 
If  you  think  of  the  mode  of  the  elaboration  of  their  thought, 
the  Latin  is  more  analytic,  the  Anglo-Saxon  more  intuitive; 
the  Latin  believes  rather  in  the  logical  nexus  of  ideas,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  in  the  organic  concatenation  of  reality.  The 
South  remains  faithful  to  its  old  Roman  heritage  and  sees 
things  from  the  legal  point  of  view;  the  North,  from  the 
moral  point  of  view. 

But  enough  has  been  said  to  impress  the  reader  with 
how  great  a  change  it  is  from  the  old  to  the  new.  For  the 
old  view,  reality  was  static  substance ;  for  the  new,  dynamic 
consciousness.  For  the  old  the  primacy  was  in  the  intellect ; 
for  the  new,  in  the  will.  For  the  old,  the  mind  was  passive 
in  knowing ;  for  the  new,  active.  For  the  old,  man  came  into 
possession  of  his  chief  good  by  the  contemplative  vision 
of  God;  for  the  new,  by  the  energetic  service  of  man.  For 
the  old,  man  was  saved  by  imperturbableness  and  peace; 
for  the  new,  by  trouble  and  struggle  and  sorrow.  For  the 
old,  man  was  saved  by  belief;  for  the  new,  by  doubt — and  it 
is  just  possible  that  there  is  more  faith  in  the  new  doubt 
than  in  the  old  belief.  Once,  in  this  matter  of  salvation, 
knowledge  preceded  conduct;  now  conduct  precedes  knowl- 
edge. Once,  being  was  before  becoming;  now,  becoming 
is  before  being.  It  is  a  great  change.  Once,  the  great 
matter  was  the  conformity  of  conduct  to  a  model  under  the 
eye  of  authority;  now,  it  is  the  development  of  character 
under  the  responsibility  of  freedom.  And  the  former  was 
peculiar  to  the  genius  of  the  South  as  the  latter  is  to  the 
genius  of  the  North. 

A  moment's  reflection  will  convince  us  that  Christianity 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  193 

as  an  authority-religion  belongs  to  the  old  static  view  of 
reality;  and  that  Christianity  as  a  religion  primarily  of  the 
will/  of  freedom,  of  the  moral  consciousness,  belongs  to  the 
new  view  of  reality.  Not  without  its  ideals,  the  old  was  a 
religion  of  ideas ;  not  without  its  ideas,  the  new  is  a  religion 
of  ideals.  And  in  this  Christ  is  distinctly  on  the  side 
of  the  modern  man.  There  is  an  impressive  illustration  of 
this  in  the  story  of  Christ's  interview  with  Pilate.  Pilate 
asked:  "Art  thou  a  king?  But  where  is  the  sign?"  In 
his  static  world,  Pilate's  first  thought  was  of  the  kingdom 
of  force.  But  Jesus  was  not  to  conquer  by  the  might 
of  force.  Jesus,  seeing  Pilate  puzzled,  came  to  the  rescue: 
"Thou  sayest  it,  I  am  king:  to  this  end  I  was  born  and  for 
this  cause  came  I  into  the  world,  that  I  might  bear  witness 
to  the  truth."  But  this  was  but  to  shift  the  problem 
for  Pilate.  Truth? — that  was  but  a  new  kind  of  force.  It 
set  Pilate  to  thinking,  not  now  of  the  Csesars,  but  of  the  Greek 

lOnce  again,  this  is  to  say  that  theonomy  is  not  heteronomy,  but  autonomy. 
Whence  the  red  of  the  rose?  From  the  sun,  you  say.  True,  but  the  sun  did  not 
reach  out  its  red  hand  and  paint  the  red  on  the  rose  from  without.  The  red  of  the 
rose  comes  from  the  rose's  own  heart,  but  it  does  not  come  from  its  own 
heart  without  the  influence  of  the  sun.  And  it  does  not  come  from  the 
sun  without  the  activity  of  the  rose.  Somehow  the  activity  of  the  sun  and 
the  self-activity  of  the  rose  come  to  be  one  and  the  same  thing.  There 
would  be  contradiction  were  theonomy  to  equal  heteronomy;  were  God  a  stranger 
and  external  to  our  being;  were  his  will  imposed  upon  us  from  without  like  a  law 
differing  from  that  of  our  true  nature.  There  is  the  inner  presence  of  God  in  man, 
and  its  mysterious  and  ceaseless  working  within  all  the  manifestations  of  man's 
personal  life.  God  lives  in  us.  We  live  in  God.  Our  freedom  is  his  authority.  His 
authority  is  our  freedom.  His  spirit  makes  us  what  we  are.  His  voice  is  the  voice 
of  our  conscience.  To  obey  the  will  of  God  is  to  obey  our  own  law.  To  obey  our 
own  law  is  to  obey  the  will  of  God.  There  are  no  longer  two  laws :  a  divine  law  over 
against  the  law  of  conscience.  There  are  no  longer  two  truths :  a  supernatural  truth 
over  against  the  natural  truth.  There  are  no  longer  two  powers :  a  power  that  is  the 
order  of  nature  and  of  history,  and  another  power  that  is  other  and  different  from 
the  order  of  nature  and  of  history.  There  are  no  longer  two  societies:  a  divine 
society  in  the  Trinity  and  a  human  society  outside  the  Trinity^aud  there  is  no 
longer  a  divine  society  and  authority  over  against  civil  society  and  temporal 
authority.  There  is  but  one  life,  one  society,  one  general  culture,  one  religion,  one 
education,  one  eternal  divine  purpose  in  all,  running  through  all  and  unto  all.  It  is 
this  principle  which  is  at  once  a  principle  of  freedom  and  of  authority,  which  is  now, 
and  is  to  continue,  to  assert  itself  against  the  dogmatic  view  of  the  world  which  the 
cosmology  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  and  the  history  of  the 
nineteenth  century  have  destroyed. 


194   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

and  Roman  philosophers,  of  Socrates  and  Cicero,  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  and  of  the  termination  of  the  whole  philosophical 
development  in  skepticism  and  despair  of  knowledge.  So 
Pilate  now  thought  that  Jesus  meant  to  conquer,  not  by  the 
might  of  physical  force,  but  by  the  might  of  intellectual 
force — force  in  either  case.  So  Jesus  finally  corrected 
Pilate  by  saying,  ?io/,  "He  that  heareth  my  voice  is  of  the 
truth" — that  would  be  to  conquer  by  the  might  of  force 
again — hut,  "He  that  is  of  the  iridli  heareth  my  voice." 

And  what  does  that  mean?  It  is,  indeed,  a  kingdom  of 
the  children  of  the  truth  that  Jesus  rules  over.  But  it  is  not 
unpersonal,  scientific  truth  of  which  Jesus  was  thinking. 
Jesus  was  no  man  of  science.  He  founded  no  academy, 
walked  in  no  porch,  gathered  about  him  thus  no  scholars, 
strictly  speaking,  that  they  might  learn  the  wisdom  of  the 
world  from  him.  But  Jesus  was  a  man  of  life,  King  in  the 
kingdom  of  life,  and  those  he  gathered  about  him  he  taught 
the  art  of  life — a  life  which  was  not  of  this  world,  which  made 
different  men  out  of  them  from  what  they  were  before.  He 
was  not  King,  in  the  kingdom  of  concepts;  he  was  King  in 
the  kingdom  of  the  ideal;  and  he  would  conquer,  not  by  the 
might  of  force,  physical  or  intellectual — militarism,  mechan- 
ism, or  miracle,  the  compulsion  of  logic  or  of  oratory!  Poor 
Pilate  did  not  understand  this,  as  the  multitude  today  do  not 
understand  it,  because  —  because,  they  are  not  of  the  truth; 
have  no  inner  kinship,  no  bent  to  the  truth.  Pilate,  with 
sigh  or  scorn,  and  with  the  satiety  of  a  cultivated  Roman, 
familiar  with  truth  over  which  philosophers  debated,  asked: 
"What  is  truth?"  "J  am  truth,"  says  Jesus.  Truth  is 
personal.  And  so  Christ  and  conscience  are  continuous.  We 
are  saved  by  ideals,  their  dynamic  and  their  temptation.  It 
is  because  Jesus  is  like  us  that  he  can  fasten  on  to  our  lives. 
It  is  because  he  is  greater  than  we  are  that  he  bows  us  down 
in  repentance  and  builds  us  up  in  faith. 


The  Changed  View  of  the  World  195 

What,  now,  is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter?  It  is 
this:  The  eternal  gate  to  the  eternal  city  of  the  gospel  is 
the  fact  of  conscience.  The  power  which  Christianity  has 
over  man  is  precisely  equivalent  to  the  duty-feeling.  By 
virtue  of  our  humanity  we  owe  to  Christianity  the  obedience 
of  the  heart.  We  subject  ourselves  to  the  gospel,  not  to 
become  different  from  what  we  are  by  endowment  and 
nature,  but  in  order  to  become  and  remain  men  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  word.  Christianity  turns  directly  to 
the  sole  enduring  and  permanent  element  of  our  human 
life — the  eternal  gospel  to  the  eternal  man — and  lays  the 
greatest  possible  stress  on  that,  on  the  duty-consciousness. 

And  so  the  conditions  of  faith  in  the  present  are  also  its 
eternal  conditions,  perfectly  human  and  accessible  to  man; 
for  the  timeless  can  be  in  all  time.  The  difficulties  of  the 
present  situation  are  apparently  very  great ;  in  reality,  very 
small.  For  the  pathway  remains  free  and  open  today  as 
yesterday,  yesterday  as  today.  It  is  open  to  the  humblest, 
not  to  the  wisest ;  to  him  who  does,  not  to  him  who  knows. 
You  learn  to  walk  it  through  obedience,  not  through  knowl- 
edge. But  this  obedience  is  required  by  conscience  before 
it  was  required  by  Christ.  Christ  is  simply  continuous  with 
conscience,  Light  of  our  light,  Ideal  of  our  ideal.  Conscience 
of  our  conscience ;  and  so  personal  force  saves  personal  life 
— just  this,  and  nothing  else  besides.  Faith  has  its  origin 
in  obedience  to  duty;  it  has  its  goal  and  consummation 
in  obedience  to  the  God  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  supreme 
fountain  of  duty  in  us  and  of  revelation  in  history.  "He 
that  willeth  to  do  my  will  shall  know,"  said  Jesus  to  the 
assembled  multitude.  This  is  the  great  word  in  which  the 
Son  of  man  appealed  from  his  gospel,  rejected  by  man,  to 
that  Gospel  regnant  in  man  through  the  power  of  conscience; 
and  this  word  remains  forever  the  basis  of  all  human  life 
and  of  all  Christian  certainty. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  NATURALISTIC  AND   THE   RELIGIOUS  VIEW  OF  THE 

WORLD 

The  first  part  of  our  task  is  done.  We  have  tried  to  show 
that  it  belongs  to  the  nature  of  Catholic  and  Protestant 
orthodoxy  to  be  certain  that  they  have  absolute  truth,  that 
apart  from  their  doctrine  there  is  no  truth  and  no  salvation. 
But  the  recognition  of  the  autonomy  of  reason  is  speedily 
becoming  a  fact  in  the  modern  world  —  reason  understood 
broadly  and  deeply,  and  not  narrowly.  And  reason  is  the 
unimpeachable  judge  in  all  questions  pertaining  to  the  true 
and  the  false,  the  good  and  the  bad.  There  is  no  court  of 
appeal  above  reason,  no  "revelation"  even  by  which  reason 
is  abridged;  on  the  contrary,  the  truth  of  any  supposed 
revelation,  the  authority  of  any  given  tradition,  must  be 
tested  before  the  forum  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  reason  of 
man.  This,  once  for  all,  is  the  element  of  truth  in  rationalism 
— a  system  of  thought  to  be  rejected  as  a  whole.  We  can- 
not, at  our  peril,  go  back  to  the  subjection  of  reason  to 
external  authority,  be  it  book  or  church,  God  or  man.  My 
faith  rests  on  the  spontaneous  assent  of  my  reason  and  my 
conscience.  In  a  deep  and  abiding  sense,  I  myself  am  the 
one  who  makes  the  authority  for  myself;  therefore  my 
character  is  to  be  judged  by  my  master  as  well  as  by  my 
obedience.  And  I  must  take  this  authority  ever  anew  from 
case  to  case,  as  a  living  and  workable  auxiliary  to  experience. 
I  reserve  the  right  to  examine  every  point.  An  authority 
which  would  bind  my  reason  and  my  conscience,  by  means 
of  its  pronouncemerJts  concerning  truth  and  error,  good  and 
bad,  would  bind  me  to  believe  what  I,  using  my  own  reason, 
must   hold   to   be  untrue.     This  cannot  be;   this  I   cannot 

196 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    197 

acknowledge  without  self-abdication  and  self-blasphemy, 
without  surrendering  the  crown  of  manhood  which  is  the 
self-certainty  of  spirit.  That  I  am  inwardly  bound  only  by 
my  reason  and  my  conscience,  and  not  by  any  authority  out 
of  me,  this  is  not  only  the  Magna  Charta  of  Protestantism, 
but  the  form  of  that  inner  ethical  disposition  which  it  was 
the  mission  and  merit  of  Jesus  to  organize  and  consummate. 
The  deliberate  repudiation  of  self-dependence  and  self- 
accountability,  the  voluntary  surrender  to  an  infallible  ex- 
ternal authority,  blind  obedience  in  matters  of  faith  and 
conscience — in  a  word,  the  foregoing  in  principle  of  the  use 
of  my  reason  and  my  conscience  —  this  is  tantamount  to 
the  denial  of  the  omnipresence  of  God,  who  is  Living  Love 
and  Wisdom,  in  the  life  of  humanity.  And  to  say  this  is 
entirely  consistent  with  the  conviction,  which  we  should 
gratefully  cherish,  that  all  men  begin  their  development 
with  childlike  adhesion  to  authorities  and  models,  and  that 
these  have  great  humane  and  pedagogic  importance.  But 
the  doctrine  of  static  infallibility,  on  the  one  hand,  with  its 
correlate  of  permanent  human  nonage,  on  the  other,  is 
immoral;  and  the  recognition  of  this  doctrine  is  no  better, 
since  its  logical  issue  is  the  annihilation  of  one's  spiritual 
self.  Consequently,  not  the  scientific  interest  simply,  but 
the  religious  and  moral  most  of  all,  have  demolished  the 
principle  of  absolutism  of  Catholic  and  Protestant  ortho- 
doxy, and  a  further  development  of  religion  is  the  order  of 
the  day.  Demolished,  did  I  say?  The  tree  seems  full- 
fruited.  Zeitgeist  is  a  mighty  support.  Force,  not  ideals, 
is  god,  and  force  tends  to  absolutism.  Absolutism  in  busi- 
ness, which  is  mammonism;  in  government,  which  is  mili- 
tarism— this  repression  of  individuality,  this  faith  in  force 
and  unfaith  in  ideals,  is  an  expression  in  another  form  of 
the  orthodoxies  which  build  on  some  sort  of  institutional 
infallibility;  and  the  former  reinforce  the  latter.     There  is 


198   The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Religion 

an  attraction  and  fascination  on  the  part  of  each  for  the 
other.  Thus  the  outlook  for  absolutism  seems  favorable. 
Moreover,  the  positivism  of  science  without  philosophy,  r.  e., 
naturalism — to  be  examined  immediately — likewise  plays 
into  the  hands  of  this  other  positivism  of  external  authority. 

Nevertheless,  I  do  not  believe  in  the  triumph  of  any  of 
these  absolutisms.  The  victory  is  not  with  the  strong,  not 
with  force,  but  with  ideals.  Unless  occidental  philosophy 
shall  go  down,  the  autonomy  of  reason  will  not  perish. 
Faith  in  force  may  now  and  then  win  a  battle,  but  not  the 
campaign.  There  seems  to  be  something  like  a  law  of 
periodicity  in  historical  life,  according  to  which  militarism 
and  mammonism  have  their  day;  but  they  have  their  day 
and  cease  to  be.  Faith  in  ideas  and  ideals,  crucified  by  the 
vulgar  authorities  and  infallibilities  and  absolutes  of  the 
empirical  reality  round  about — it  is  a  tragic  law  of  the 
world-order  itself — rises  again  in  the  power  of  the  Spirit, 
crying:  "I  am  the  First  and  the  Last,  and  the  Living  One, 
and  I  was  dead  and,  behold,  I  am  alive  forevermore,  and  I 
have  the  keys  of  death  and  of  hell."  It  is  even  so,  for  this 
faith  is  faith  in  freedom,  in  truth,  in  righteousness,  faith  of 
reason  in  its  own  self.' 

But  with  this  r6sum6  of  the  whole  previous  discussion 
the  first  part  of  our  task  is  ended;  and  we  might  at  once 
turn  our  eyes  to  the  future,  were  it  not  that,  as  we  burst 
open  the  two-leaved  gates  of  brass  of  the  prison-house  of  the 
religious  dogmatism  of  the  past,  we  are  confronted  with 
the    worse    slavery    of  the   naturalistic    dogmatism  of  the 

1  "The  system  of  spiritual  absolutism,  carried  to  its  utmost  conclusion,  makes 
men  automata,  who  believe  and  do  what  they  are  commanded,  without  doubt,  with- 
out examination,  without  any  responsibility  of  their  own.  Reason  and  conscience, 
made  superfluous  by  the  sole  virtue  of  obedience,  fall  into  a  process  of  decay,  and  at 
last  of  atrophy,  like  unused  organs.  The  correlative  of  complete  absolutism  is 
idiotism,  and  I  do  not  believe  that  idiotism  is  a  principle  of  progress."— Professoe 
Paulsen,  Philosophia Militans,  p.  78.  If  this  seem  somewhat  harsh,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  it  lies  in  the  nature  of  reason  to  react  with  inner  hostility  against  every 
external  authority  that  demands  absolute  subjection  in  spiritual  and  moral  things. 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views     199 

present.  As  there  can  be  religion  without  the  old  super- 
naturalism,  so  there  can  be  science  without  the  new  natural- 
ism. It  is  not  supernaturalism  and  naturalism,  but  religion 
and  science,  that  express  and  realize  structural  needs  of  the 
human  spirit.  And  the  conflict  is  not  between  science  and 
religion,  but  between  science  and  supernaturalism,  religion 
and  naturalism  —  the  members  of  each  pair  being  mutually 
exclusive,  while  supernaturalism  and  naturalism  are  not  so 
hostile  as  one  might  suppose  at  first  thought.  Both  extremes 
agree  in  denying  meaning  to  the  world;  supernaturalism 
supplying  the  meaning  from  without,  naturalism  substituting 
therefor  adaptation  without  purpose.  In  particular  is  super- 
naturalism friendly  to  naturalism,'  since  the  miraculous 
agency  postulated  by  supernaturalism  is  the  more  con- 
spicuous and  masterful,  the  more  tightly  closed  the  mathe- 
matico-mechanical  system  of  naturalism  turns  out  to  be. 
But,  religion  without  supernaturalism,  science  without  natur- 
alism— that  is  our  thesis. 

To  be  sure,  it  goes  without  saying  that  the  rejection  of 
supernaturalism  —  the  conclusion  of  the  first  part  of  this, 
book — is  not  tantamount  to  the  denial  of  siipernaturey  any 
more  than  the  rejection  of  naturalism — our  present  task — is. 
tantamount  to  a  denial  of  nature.  Indeed,  were  it  correct  to 
understand  nature  in  the  sense  of  empiricism,  revelation  as. 
effect  of  God  must  be  supernatural,  and  dualism  would  thus 
remain  the  world-view  indispensable  to  faith.  But  it  may  be 
shown  that  such  empiricism  is  indefensible.  And  we  are  led 
to  a  discussion  of  the  subject,  inasmuch  as,  while  super- 
naturalism makes  the  further  development  of  religion  impos- 
sible, naturalism  is  the  virtual  negation  of  all  religion.'^ 

1  It  is  a  just  observation  of  Professor  Harald  HOffding  that  materialism  and' 
theology  often  enjoy  a  better  mutual  understanding  than  either  has  for  the  critical 
philosophy.    See  op.  cit.,  p.  174. 

2PHYSICDS  (=  Geoege  J.  ROMANES),  Candid  Examination  of  Theism,  pp.  Si  t., 
recognizes  this  for  himself  in  the  following  pathetic  passage:  "And  now,  in  conclu- 
sion, I  feel  it  desirable  to  state  that  any  antecedent  bias  with  regard  to  Theism  which 


200    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

"The  scientific  dogmatism  of  the  present"  was  the  phrase 
by  which  we  designated  naturalism.  But  one  must  not 
seem  to  deny  that  naturalism  has  had  a  long  history.  It  did 
not  begin  today  or  yesterday,  but  it  is  very  old — old  as 
philosophy,  as  human  doubt  and  reflection.  Originally,  re- 
ligion satisfied  all  the  needs  of  the  human  spirit,  the  cogni- 
tive stress  of  man  as  well.  Religious  ideas  contained  the 
explanation  of  existence  in  whole  and  in  part.  But  with  the 
rise  of  independent  science  a  new  kind  of  explanation,  dif- 
ferent from  the  religious,  arose  likewise.  Naturalism  accepts 
the  scientific  explanation  of  reality  and  rejects  the  religious. 
And  it  must  be  admitted  that  if  it  be  the  function  of  religion 
to  solve  riddles,  to  understand  and  explain  reality  as  science 
counts  understanding  and  explanation,  naturalism  has  made 

I  individually  possess  is  unquestionably  on  the  side  of  traditional  beliefs.  It  is 
therefore  with  the  utmost  sorrow  that  I  find  myself  compelled  to  accept  the  conclu- 
sions here  worked  out ;  and  nothing  could  have  induced  me  to  publish  them  save  the 
strength  of  my  conviction  that  it  is  the  duty  of  every  member  of  society  to  give  his 
fellows  the  benefit  of  his  labors  for  whatever  they  may  be  worth.  Just  as  I  am  con- 
fident that  truth  must  in  the  end  be  most  profitable  for  the  race,  so  I  am  persuaded 
that  every  individual  endeavor  to  attain  it,  provided  only  that  such  endeavor  is  un- 
biased and  sincere,  ought,  without  hesitation,  to  be  made  the  common  property  of  all 
men,  no  matter  in  what  direction  the  results  of  its  promulgation  may  appear  to  tend. 
And  so  far  as  the  ruination  of  individual  happiness  is  concerned,  the  result  of  this 
analysis  has  been  to  show  that,  whether  I  regard  the  problem  of  Theism  on  the  lower 
plane  of  strictly  relative  probability,  or  on  the  higher  plane  of  purely  formal  con- 
siderations, it  equally  becomes  my  obvious  duty  to  stifle  all  belief  of  the  kind  which 
I  conceive  to  be  the  noblest,  and  to  discipline  my  intellect  with  regard  to  this  matter 
into  an  attitude  of  the  purest  skepticism.  And  forasmuch  as  I  am  far  from  being 
able  to  agree  with  those  who  afiirm  that  the  twilight  doctrine  of  the  'new  faith'  is  a 
desirable  substitute  for  the  waning  splendor  of  'the  old,'  I  am  not  ashamed  to  con- 
fess that  with  this  virtual  negation  of  God  the  universe  to  me  has  lost  its  soul  of 
loveliness;  and  although  from  henceforth  the  precept  to  'work  while  it  is  day'  will 
doubtless  but  gain  an  intensified  force  from  the  terribly  intensified  moaning  of  the 
words  that  'the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can  work,'  yet  when  at  times  I  think,  as 
think  at  times  I  must,  of  the  appalling  contrast  between  the  hallowed  glory  of  that 
creed  which  once  was  mine  and  the  lonely  mystery  of  existence  as  now  I  find  it  —  at 
such  times  I  shall  ever  feel  it  impossible  to  avoid  the  sharpest  pang  of  which  my 
nature  is  susceptible.  For  whether  it  be  due  to  my  intelligence  not  being  sufficiently 
advanced  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  age,  or  whether  it  be  due  to  the  memory  of 
those  sacred  associations  which  to  me  at  least  were  the  sweetest  that  life  has  given, 
I  cannot  but  feel  that  for  me,  and  for  others  who  think  as  I  do,  there  is  a  dreadful 
truth  in  those  words  of  Hamilton :  "  Philosophy  having  become  a  meditation,  not 
merely  of  death,  but  of  annihilation,  the  precept  knoru  thyself  has  become  trans- 
formed into  the  terrible  oracle  to  CEdipus— 'Mayest  thou  ne'er  know  the  truth  of 
what  thou  art.' " 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    201 

out  its  case  against  the  validity  of  religious  ideas.  But  if 
there  is  more  and  other  to  reality  than  can  be  exhibited  by 
the  scientific  process  of  explanation,  there  may  be  room  for 
religion  whose  motive  may  be  worthful  and  whose  ideas  valid 
in  the  expression  and  development  of  sides  of  the  human 
spirit  other  than  the  scientific.  Naturalism — so  its  whole 
history  testifies — belongs  in  its  way  to  that  false  intellec- 
tualism  of  which  we  saw  that  orthodoxy  and  rationalism  were 
likewise  forms,  and  concludes  that,  because  religious  ideas 
are  not  valid  for  science,  they  are  illusory,  and  at  all  events 
serve  no  important  end  in  the  development  of  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.  If  naturalism  has  the 
merit  of  giving  to  science  the  things  that  are  science's,  which 
is  yet  not  quite  true,  its  error  is — so  its  whole  history  at- 
tests— in  refusing  to  religion  the  things  that  are  religion's; 
for  it  falsely  assumes  that  the  whole  of  religion  is  the  religious 
idea,  and  that  the  invalidation  of  the  religious  idea  for  pur- 
poses of  scientific  knowledge  is  its  invalidation  for  any  pur- 
pose whatever. 

After  so  much  by  way  of  orientation,  we  may  return  to 
history.  For  twenty-five  centuries  the  naturalistic  and  the 
religious  view  of  the  world  have  been  in  conflict — the  latter 
going  back  to  prehistoric  antiquity,  the  former  dating  from 
the  days  of  Thales,  father  of  western  science  and  philosophy. 
Everywhere,  where  men  begin  to  form  thoughts  concerning 
the  whence  and  the  how  of  the  reality  round  about  them, 
naturalism  has  emerged.  Certainly  in  the  philosophic  sys- 
tems of  Leucippus  and  Democritus  and  Epicurus  it  is  already 
a  thoroughly  fashioned  standpoint.  Even  in  times  when 
"believing,"  antinaturalistic,  and  supernaturalistic  systems 
were  officially  dominant  and  apparently  universally  acknowl- 
edged, it  has  still  existed  and  remained  a  latent  and  quietly 
feared  opponent.  Thus  it  did  not  arise  for  the  first  time  in 
the  modern  systems  of  materialism  or  positivism:   in  the 


202    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

systdme  de  la  nature  and  the  Vhomme  machine;  in  the 
materialistic  reaction  against  the  idealistic  natural  specula- 
tion of  Schelling  and  Hegel ;  in  the  materialistic  controversy 
of  the  last  century;  in  the  naturalistic  writings  of  Moleschott, 
Czolbe,  Vogt,  Btlchner,  Haeckel;  and  in  the  naturalistic 
tendency  and  mood  newly  and  peculiarly  formed  by  Darwin- 
ism. On  the  contrary,  it  has  simply  blossomed  out  more 
tropically  than  ever  before.  But,  old  as  it  is,  its  age  is  no 
reproach  and  no  proof  against  it;  rather,  its  age  is  a  proof 
that  it  is  not  so  much  an  accidental  as,  in  a  certain  sense,  a 
necessary  phenomenon.  It  is  as  idle  as  it  is  unworthy  to 
treat  this  phenomenon  as  a  child  of  the  modern  passion  to 
doubt,  of  iniquity  or  obduracy.  Old  as  naturalism  is,  it  is 
ever  much  the  same  in  its  diverse  historical  forms  and  phases, 
in  its  motives  and  methods,  in  its  aims  and  proofs,  in  its 
concomitant  sentiments,  sympathies,  and  antipathies.  Not 
to  set  out  from  a  finished  and  unitary  principle  of  its  own, 
but  primarily  to  be  criticism  and  opposition  to  other  views — 
this  is  common  to  naturalism  in  all  its  forms,  ancient  and 
modern.  It  grows  up  everywhere  as  opposition  to  super- 
naturalism — the  negative  dos^matism  of  which  the  latter  is 
the  positive — whether  that  supernaturalism  be  the  naive 
mythological  explanation  of  the  cosmic  process  on  the  part 
of  primitive  religions,  or  the  supernaturalistic  popular  meta- 
physics which  is  wont  to  accompany  every  higher  religion. 
Naturalism  befriends  one  of  the  most  commendable  impulses 
of  human  nature,  the  impulse  to  explain  and  comprehend — 
and  to  do  so  on  the  basis  of  simple,  familiar,  and  ordinary 
causes.  Natural  investigation  owes  its  marvelous  triumphs 
primarily  to  the  consistency  with  which  it  rejects  all  search 
for  ends,  and  knows  only  of  cause  and  efPect  in  the  legal 
system  of  the  corporeal  world.  Aversion  to  teleology  is 
characteristic  of  all  naturalistic  systems.  But,  for  another 
thing,  the  ideal  of  naturalism  is  the  mathematico-mechanical 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    203 

calculability  of  all  natural  connections  and  sequences,  the 
remainderless  rationalization  of  reality,  the  transparency  and 
explicability  to  the  intellect  of  all  that  is  and  takes  place. 
The  model  of  naturalism  is  the  universe  of  astronomy,  with 
its  precisely  calculable  and  inviolable  interconnection  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  with  its  transparent  relations  of  a  purely 
mechanical  character  obeying  rigid  necessity.  To  transfer 
the  same  clearness  and  penetrableness,  the  same  necessity 
and  calculableness,  to  all  that  is — in  a  word,  to  "astronomize" 
all  reality,  natural  and  historical,  mental  and  moral — this  is 
the  ideal  and  goal  of  naturalism.  Finally,  it  is  but  a  step 
from  this  to  the  conception  of  a  cosmos  of  being  and  becom- 
ing which  is  self-explicable,  self-understandable,  upborne  by 
its  own  unbroken  and  all-sufficient  causality  and  legality, 
self-dependent,  self-contained — a  God,  indeed,  that  is  self- 
sufficient  and  self-dependent.  Naturalism  "deifies  law  and 
outlaws  the  Deity." 

In  the  light  of  history,  and  of  these  statements,  we  may 
now  approach  our  problem  more  intelligently.  Although 
historically  the  religious  view  of  the  world  has  been  asso- 
ciated with  supernaturalism,  and  the  naturalistic  has  built 
upon  natural  science  to  a  very  large  degree,  the  conflict,  it 
will  be  attempted  to  show,  has  not  been  between  religion 
and  science,  but  between  naturalism  and  supernaturalism, 
involving  a  conflict  of  science  with  supernaturalism  and  of 
religion  with  naturalism.  In  other  words,  in  opposition  to 
the  thesis  of  supernaturalism  there  has  arisen  the  antithesis 
of  naturalism,  leaving  us  the  problem  of  finding  some  means 
of  synthesizing  the  elements  of  truth  in  both  positions.  The 
old  religious  world-view  was,  in  its  philosophic  aspect,  dual- 
istic  supernaturalism.  After  the  animistic  stage  of  thought 
had  been  outgrown,  there  arose  in  human  thinking  a  dualism 
of  the  natural  and  the  supernatural.  There  was  a  back- 
ground of  natural  mechanical  order,  a  sort  of  ongoing  from 


204   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

itself  and  of  itself  of  the  processes  of  nature  with  regularity 
of  sequence;  but  at  any  time  there  might  be  irruptions  of 
super-physical  force  having  a  personal  or  quasi-personal 
source.  This  was  conceived  to  be  analogous  to  man's  action 
upon  nature,  but  to  be  effected  without  means,  or  without 
known  means.  Such  miraculous  interventions  were  necessarily 
mysterious,  not  only  not  understood,  but  hopelessly  unintel- 
ligible. Not  only  did  they  transcend  the  known  laws  of 
nature,  but  involved  a  suspension  or  violation  of  those  laws. 
The  universe  of  material  objects  and  of  spirits  was  conceived 
to  have  been  brought  out  of  nothingness  into  existence  by 
the  creative  fiat  of  the  divine  will;  and  once  this  was  done 
it  was  left  to  go  on  by  itself  for  the  most  part,  although 
there  were  interventions  from  time  to  time  in  acts  of  special 
providence  in  answer  to  prayer,  in  "revelation,"  and  in 
miracles  on  other  occasions.  One  of  the  most  important 
evidences  of  the  supernatural  control  of  nature  was  thought 
to  be  the  numerous  examples  of  special  adaptations  in  nature. 
For  instance,  the  adaptations  of  organisms  to  their  environ- 
ment, and  of  organs  to  the  needs  of  the  organism,  were  held 
to  be  unmistakable  evidence  of  a  special  purpose  and  activity 
on  the  part  of  a  Creator  viewed  as  a  particular  being.  Thus, 
as  integral  elements  of  the  old  religious  world-view,  there 
were  teleology,  mystery,  and  dependence,  and  these  were 
thought  to  require  dualistic  supernaturalism ;  that  is,  the 
dualism  of  matter  and  God,  of  natural  and  miraculous,  of 
science  and  faith.  As  a  protest  against  this  supernaturalistic 
world-view,  as  already  stated,  naturalism  arose.  Its  chief 
sources  of  strength  are  its  harmony  with  the  knowledge- 
process  in  man  in  one  particular,  namely,  explaining  the 
unknown  by  reference  to  the  familiar,  its  continually  increas- 
ing body  of  confirmatory  scientific  facts,  and  its  affinity  to 
Zeitgeist  in  general.  Especially,  with  every  fresh  accession 
to  the  realm  of  the  orderly  and  intelligible   through   the 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    205 

efforts  of  scientific  investigation,  the  apologists  of  orthodoxy, 
who  thought  they  had  to  defend  miracle-causality  as  the 
essence  of  the  religious  view  of  the  world,  were  beaten  back 
from  position  after  position.  As  already  seen,  the  transition 
from  the  Ptolemaic  to  the  Copernican  astronomy  undermined 
many  of  the  suppositions  of  the  supernaturalists.  Newton's 
mechanical  laws  applied  to  the  physical  universe  made  many 
think — devout  as  Newton  himself  remained — that  God  was 
being  banished  from  the  universe.  Religion  took  refuge  in 
the  realm  of  the  organic,  whose  evident  adaptedness  was 
thought  to  be  a  conclusive  proof  of  the  existence  of  an  order- 
ing intelligence.  Surely,  so  it  was  hoped,  the  mechaniciz;a- 
tion  of  reality  will  call  a  halt  at  the  kingdom  of  the  organic. 
But  finally  in  the  nineteenth  century  Darwinism  came,  with 
its  plausible  theory  in  explanation  of  the  origin  of  species, 
including  man,  by  natural  selection  through  the  survival  of 
the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  By  means  of  this 
formula  it  was  claimed  that  not  only  all  physical  events,  but 
all  mental,  moral,  religious,  and  social  facts,  could  be  explained. 
It  was  a  further  application  of  Laplace's  dictum:  "I  have  no 
need  of  the  hypothesis  of  God,"  Astronomy  that  began 
with  the  macrocosm  ended  with  microcosm.  All  existence 
was  mechanicized.  The  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy, 
together  with  the  nebular  hypothesis  and  Darwinism,  seemed 
to  eliminate  definitely  from  the  world  all  mystery,  depend- 
ence, teleology  (end  or  providence).  If  mysteries  remained, 
they  were  simply  unsolved  but  soluble  problems  of  science; 
the  universe  was  to  be  completely  understood  without  faith ; 
if  there  was  dependence,  it  was  relative  only,  the  dependence 
of  one  part  on  another  part  of  the  self-dependent  whole ;  if 
there  was  adaptation,  it  was  not  in  the  purpose,  but  in  the 
result  only ;  it  was  fully  accounted  for  by  natural  causes. 

This  naturalistic  view  of  the  world  has  strong  affinities 
for  materialistic  monism,  which  regards  atoms  as  the  ultimate 


206   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

reality,  and  for  energetic  monism,  which  regards  the  ultimate 
reality  as  physical  force.  But,  as  against  such  gnosticism, 
it  has  become  very  common  to  combine  naturalism  with  an 
agnosticism  which  knows  that,  apart  from  the  world  of 
natural  science,  all  else  is  unknown  or  even  unknowable. 
On  the  moral  side,  the  outcome  of  all  this  is  either  super- 
ficial optimism  or  despairing  pessimism. 

From  discussions  in  previous  chapters — and  the  argu- 
ments need  not  be  reproduced  in  this  connection — it  is 
evident  that  science,  and  any  philosophy  which  undertakes  to 
synthesize  the  results  of  natural  knowledge  in  a  self-consistent 
world-view,  make  for  the  overthrow  of  the  old  dualistic  super- 
naturalism  with  which  the  religious  world-view  seemed  to  be 
so  intimately  related.  But  does  the  overthrow  of  this  old 
theory  necessarily  involve  the  fall  of  religion  ?  Both  super- 
naturalism  and  naturalism  think  so.  Our  contention  is  that 
both  are  wrong.  The  religious  view  of  the  world,  reduced  to 
its  lowest  terms,  demands  mystery,  dependence,  and  teleology. 
It  is  the  merit  of  supernaturalism  to  grant  these,  while  it  is 
the  demerit  of  supernaturalism  in  the  interest  of  its  doctrine 
of  miraculous  causality  to  negate  the  scientific  principle  of 
natural  causation.  It  is  the  merit  of  naturalism  to  honor  the 
scientific  principle  according  to  which  nature  is  interpreted 
by  nature  as  one  might  interpret  one  passage  in  a  book  by 
comparing  it  with  other  passages  in  the  same  book — a  prin- 
ciple without  whose  application  we  understand  nothing  con- 
formably to  the  scientific  type  of  understanding  and  the  in- 
tellectual habitude  corresponding  thereto.  But  if  it  is  the 
demerit  of  supernaturalism  to  deny  the  scientific  principle  of 
the  inviolability  of  legal  and  causal  sequence,  it  is  the  demerit 
of  naturalism  to  assume  that  the  categories  of  law  and  cause 
exhaust  reality,  thus  leaving  no  room  for  the  religious  need 
of  mystery,  dependence,  and  teleology.  Our  thesis  is,  once 
again  let  it  be  said,  that,  while  religion  demands  these  three 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    207 

factors,  science  allows  their  possibility  and  even  lends  some 
countenance  to  them,  and  the  most  defensible  philosophy, 
which  may  be  called  spiritualistic  evolutionism,  establishes 
their  reality.  In  other  words,  to  defend  against  supernatural- 
ism  the  ideal  of  understanding  and  explaining  reality  which 
science  requires,  and  against  naturalism  the  ideal  of  mean- 
ing and  worth  which  are  the  kernel  of  the  religious  interest 
— this  is  at  once  the  task  and  the  salvation  of  the  modern 
man.  And  if  it  be  necessary  neither  for  science  to  deny 
mystery,  dependence,  and  teleology,  in  order  to  affirm  law  and 
cause  as  it  must  conceive  law  and  cause,  nor  for  religion  to 
deny  these  scientific  principles  in  order  to  affirm  the  depth, 
dependency,  and  meaning  of  things,  it  is  evident  that  science 
and  religion  are  in  no  intrinsically  irreconcilable  conflict,  in 
which  case — the  interest  of  knowledge  and  of  life  being  thus 
secure  — we  may  very  well  be  willing  to  class  both  super- 
naturalism  and  naturalism  among  our  little  speculative  sys- 
tems that  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be.  It  is  for  this 
reason,  indeed,  that  we  conceive  it  to  be  the  modern  thinker's 
foremost  duty  to  disengage  religion  from  supernaturalism 
and  science  from  naturalism. 

1.  Mystery  in  religion. — It  is  customary  to  find  mystery 
interesting,  especially  if  there  is  prospect  of  a  surprising 
explanation;  but  mystery  in  religion  is  more  serious  than 
interesting.  It  is,  moreover,  inexplicable  to  science.  To  say 
so  seems  to  offend  science.  The  scientist  is  stimulated  by  a 
mystery  which  he  can  subject  to  investigation  and  hope  to 
unveil  sooner  or  later,  but  a  mystery  which  forever  remains 
mysterious  in  the  nature  of  the  case  he  is  inclined  to  treat  as 
an  absurdity.  To  be  sure,  there  are  patronizing  scientists 
who,  with  large-hearted  tolerance,  accord  to  religion,  and  to 
religion  alone,  the  prerogative  to  possess  insoluble  mysteries ; 
but  just  on  that  account  they  relegate  religion  to  the  intellec- 
tually immature,  while  they  themselves  confine  themselves  to 


208   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

the  region  of  rational  reality.  Butatjieart  they  think  that 
science  and  mystery  are  exclusive,  in  the  sense  that  what  is 
explained  is  not  mysterious  and  what  is  mysterious  is  not 
explained.  The  difficulty  thus  presented  is  common  to  both 
Catholic  and  Protestant  peoples.  Mystery  is  an  outstanding 
fact  in  Catholicism,  which  requires  men  to  accept  religion 
with  mystery,  or  to  give  up  the  former  with  the  latter.  Re- 
jecting the  Catholic  apprehension  of  religion,  Protestantism 
is  in  an  even  more  embarrassing  dilemma  on  account  of  its 
attempt  at  a  rationalization  of  religion.  As  a  reward  for 
this  attempt  it  hopes  to  gain  a  stronger  hold  upon  thinking 
men,  and  to  render  their  renunciation  of  religion  or  their 
playing  with  it  all  the  more  difficult.  But  there  is  a  certain 
opposition  between  doctrines,  theories,  systems  of  thought, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  mystery,  on  the  other.  The  more  a 
system  of  doctrine  overcomes  the  irrational,  the  more  perfect 
it  seems  to  us.  The  Elder  Protestantism,  belonging  to  a  time 
when  heaven  and  earth  were  still  full  of  real  mysteries,  did  not 
feel  the  need  of  rationality  so  powerfully.  But,  as  we  have 
already  had  occasion  to  remark,  when,  beginning  with  New- 
ton's great  discovery,  the  cosmic  mechanism  seemed  to  be 
deciphered ;  when,  further,  in  all  regions  of  life  and  of  science 
a  thirst  for  the  understanding  of  the  origins  and  laws,  even 
of  the  spiritual  world,  grew  up,  the  modern  theologians  felt 
more  and  more  that  mystery  was  like  a  foreign  substance  in 
an  organism,  and  sought  to  resolve  or  remove  it.  To  replace 
the  mysterious  with  the  rational — can  theology  be  honored 
as  a  science  and  omit  this  task  ?  But,  if  it  succeeds,  it  trans- 
forms religion  into  a  doctrine,  which  the  layman  has  to  learn 
and  to  understand,  and  the  apologist  to  prove!  And  the 
practical  outcome  of  the  proof  will  ever  be — it  is  the  blunt 
lesson  of  history — the  adaptation  and  subordination  of  the 
religious  view  of  the  world  to  the  world-view  of  natural  sci- 
ence.    Hence  everything  will  be  clear;  all  diversity  will  be 


Naturalistic  and  Keligious  World-Views    209 

reduced  to  identity  and  continuity;  all  that  is  qualitative 
will  be  reduced  to  the  quantitative;  all  individualities  will 
be  explained  as  points  of  the  culmination  or  conjunction 
of  continuous  processes;  the  moral  and  religious  will  be  re- 
duced to  the  psychical,  the  psychical  to  the  physiological, 
the  physiological  to  the  mechanical — and,  because  a  piece 
of  pie  is  triangular,  pie  possesses  no  quality  save  triangu- 
larity! And,  once  yet  again,  how  like  each  other  are  intel- 
lectualism  (both  orthodox  and  rational)  in  religion,  and 
naturalism  in  science! 

But  when  rational  theology  no  longer  ventured  to  speak 
of  mystery  in  religion,  did  the  lamb  of  religion  and  the  lion 
of  naturalism  quietly  lie  down  together  ?  Did  not  the  repre- 
sentatives of  exact  science  demean  themselves  rather  coolly 
toward  those  who  believed  that  they  could  dispense  with  mys- 
tery in  religion?  For  all  alike,  did  not  mechanism  become 
materialism  and  materialism  pessimism  in  religion,  with  its 
austere  and  bitter  comfortlessness  (Strauss)?  To  be  sure, 
they  were  free  from  superstition  of  every  kind,  because  every- 
thing was  clear  to  them  —  God  and  the  world  and  the  human 
soul.  Were  they  thus  free?  On  the  contrary,  superstition, 
so  often  driven  to  its  last  ditch  and  demolished,  began  again 
to  lift  its  head  and  to  attract  multitudes  of  dissatisfied  men, 
and  engaged  to  produce  exact  scientific  proof  for  its  miracles. 
And  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  it  is  precisely  among  the 
cultured  classes  today  that  a  tendency  has  arisen,  and  is  on 
the  increase,  which  is  veering  from  the  Jack  o'Lantern  lu- 
minosity of  a  mysteryless  religion,  from  the  radiant  and 
remainderless  rationality  of  the  "religion  of  science,"  across 
to  the  hoary  and  mysterious  wisdom  of  the  Orient,  and 
expects  salvation  from  Brahmanic  gnosis  or  Buddhistic  rou- 
tine of  redemption.  Mysticism  and  Occultism — these  are 
the  glaring  opposites,  the  nemesis  of  that  rational  theology 
which  understands  all  mystery  and  all  knowledge,  but  has 


210   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

not  love.  But  still  more  damaging,  perhaps,  for  this  theology 
is  the  further  fact  that  a  tendency  has  branched  off  from  it 
which  is  satisfied  with  only  the  ethical  promotion  of  man, 
and  contents  itself  at  best  with  a  few  religious  sentiments 
and  presentiments.  But  if  this  is  the  consistent  and  final  out- 
come, what  becomes  of  religion  peculiarly  so  called  ?  What 
further  necessity  ?  It  would  be  difficult  to  give  a  satisfactory 
answer  to  this  question. 

A  great  part  of  the  educated  Protestant  world  is  undoubt- 
edly transported  into  a  difficult  situation  by  this  development 
of  matters.  Many  who  cannot  give  up  religion  fly  to  the  old 
supernaturalism  and  hold  to  a  double  bookkeeping,  as  it  is 
called,  or  torture  themselves  with  the  unfruitful  problem  of 
mediation  between  knowledge  and  faith.  Real  religion  is 
not  investigated.  Most  men  think  that  they  know  without 
further  ado  what  religion  is.  The  circumstance  that  from 
childhood  we  have  been  instructed  in  religion  may  be  the 
cause  of  this.  But  religion  is  no  doctrine  simply,  and  no 
subjective  conviction  simply,  though  it  produces  both;  it  is 
an  historical  reality  and  must  be  studied  in  its  history. 

Shall  we  study  it  in  the  Elder  Protestantism?  In  that 
case  we  should  attain  to  a  world  of  mysteries  and  riddles. 
The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  of  the  two  natures  of  Christ,  of 
predestination,  and  the  like,  would  belong  to  these  mysteries. 
But  these  are  not  the  mysteries  with  which  one  deals  in  a 
discussion  of  naturalism.  Nor  do  we  have  in  mind  the  myth, 
saga,  legend  of  religion  in  its  pre-theological  stage — mys- 
teries due  to  the  supposed  intercourse  of  man  with  invisible 
beings.  Nor  yet  again  are  we  concerned  with  the  nimbus  of 
the  miraculous  which  envelops  founders  of  religions.  It  is 
not  the  mysteries  of  religion,  be  it  dogma  or  cult,  with  which 
we  have  to  do  in  this  connection,  but  mystery  in  the  world  of 
nature  and  of  man. 

With  these  observations,  we  must  now  come  into  closer 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    211 

quarters  with  our  subject.  Naturalism,  for  one  thing,  denies 
mystery  in  the  world  of  reality,  but  religion  needs  it.  Piety 
seeks  the  deep  in  things.  It  is  drawn  toward  the  Hidden,  the 
Un-understood,  the  Mysterious.  It  is  more  than  humility, 
it  is  adoration;  and  adoration  is  the  experience  of  mystery. 
And  it  is  precisely  here  that  piety  clashes  most  violently  with 
the  sense  and  sentiment  of  naturalism,  which  not  only  searches 
the  searchable,  but  denies  the  Unsearchable  toward  which 
piety  turns  as  the  flower  to  the  sun.  The  clash  is  not  an  outer 
impingement,  but  an  inner  contrariety.  Naturalism,  with 
its  materialistic  supplementation  of  natural-science  investiga- 
tion, would  rob  piety  of  its  freedom  and  right  and  air  and 
light ;  naturalism,  with  its  ideal  of  the  penetration  and  clari- 
fication of  the  whole  world,  would  not  leave  even  a  cloud  or 
two  of  moisture  and  of  mystery  to  shield  the  sensitive,  easily 
wounded  feelings  of  the  human  heart  from  the  dry,  harsh 
light  of  an  absolute  intellectuality. 

But  is  science  competent  to  solve  the  problem  of  being? 
Because  science  succeeds  in  indicating  the  situation  of  single 
points  in  their  relation  to  other  points  along  the  curve  of 
reality,  can  it  enjoy  not  simply  this  peripheral,  but  also  a 
central  contemplation  of  the  points,  interpreting  and  valuing 
them  from  the  center  as  regards  their  function  and  signifi- 
cance for  the  whole?  Does  naturalistic  contemplation,  find- 
ing and  prescribing  law  and  rule,  measure  and  number,  there- 
by comprehend  all  that  there  is  of  a  thing?  Have  things 
only  an  outside,  but  no  inside?  As  man  is  more  than  in- 
tellect and  knowledge,  must  not  the  reality  with  which  he  is 
associated  be  more  than  sequence  according  to  law?  Meet- 
ing and  matching  the  adorable  capacity  of  the  human  soul, 
there  is  the  wonderful,  the  mysterious,  the  deep,  hidden  char- 
acter of  things,  of  all  being — unsearchable  mysteries  over 
which  we  hover,  abysmal  depths  by  which  we  are  upborne. 
In  a  world  which  was  not  so,  and  could  not  be  felt  to  be  so, 


212    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

piety  could  not  live.  Piety  cannot  endure  superficiality. 
Clear  as  the  naturalistic  atmosphere  may  be,  it  is  too  thin 
and  rarefied  to  be  breathed  freely.  Of  course,  it  is  true  that 
what  we  first  typically  and  peculiarly  name  and  love  as 
mystery,  and  the  gentle  thrill  of  veneration  in  the  presence 
of  the  deep  of  phenomenon  and  its  eternal  divine  abyss,  has 
its  special  abode  and  kingdom  in  the  world  of  the  heart  and 
of  history,  in  their  experiences,  riddles,  and  profundities. 
But  it  has  its  abode  in  nature  and  in  natural  existence,  too. 
Piety  makes  demands  upon  the  essence  and  worth  of  the 
world,  in  its  every  lineament,  modification,  and  behavior. 
The  mystery  with  which  it  has  to  do  is  no  intermittent,  ex- 
ceptional, or  isolated  feature  of  existence ;  it  is  an  immanent 
and  constant  mystery.  It  is  an  error  of  Ritschlianism  to 
assume  that  if  it  can  protect  the  region  of  the  conscious,  of 
the  historical,  of  the  spiritual,  from  being  overrun  by  natural- 
ism— if  it  can  defend  the  reality,  the  dignity,  the  self- 
dependence  of  the  personal  over  against  naturalism,  it  can 
then  very  well  surrender  nature  to  this  world-view.  But 
this  procedure  is  mistaken  generosity  and  bad  tactics — this 
abandonment  of  nature  as  indifferent  or  as  hopeless  to 
naturalism,  sacrificing  it  to  materialism.  The  materialistic 
view  of  nature  is  as  certainly  inadequate  and  partial  as  the 
naturalistic  view  of  Spirit.  There  is  more  in  the  meanest 
flower  that  blows,  in  the  tiniest  insect  that  dances  in  a  sun- 
beam, in  the  veriest  worm  or  clod,  than  naturalism  can  exhibit 
with  its  scanty  stock  of  categories — with  its  "cause"  and 
"law"  and  "weight"  and  "measure."  As  against  Ritschlian- 
ism, if  piety  be  right,  as  man  is  God's  man,  so  nature  is 
God's  nature,  and  must  bear  branded  upon  it  the  marks  by 
which  this  is  known — must  be  in  some  humble  degree  the 
home  and  hearth  of  Him  who  is  indeed  the  Abysmal,  the 
Unsearchable,  the  Inexplicable,  whose  name  is  Wonderful, 
and  whose  ways  are  past  finding  out.     And  nature  brought 


Naturalistic  and  Eeligious  World-Views    213 

under  law  and  sequence  is  none  the  less  mysterious;  for  a 
formulated  mystery  is  a  mystery  still. 

Hitherto  I  have  been  urging  the  religious  objection  to 
naturalism,  but  this  last  remark  brings  me  to  the  scientific 
objection,  which  is  both  acute  and  decisive.  Bluntly  stated 
at  the  outset,  it  is  that  the  naturalistic  explanation  explains 
everything  by  nothing.  To  see  this  it  is  necessary  to  reflect 
upon  the  relation  of  "description"  and  ''explanation"  to 
each  other,  to  the  positing  of  laws,  and  to  knowledge  in 
general.  The  purpose  of  all  investigation  is  to  know  the 
world.  But  to  know  what,  how  many,  and  of  what  kinds 
things  are,  does  not  satisfy  the  impulse  to  know.  We  want 
to  look  into  them,  to  know  how  they  came  to  be,  why  they 
are,  why  they  are  when  they  are  and  as  they  are.  The  tirst 
step  of  knowledge  is  to  apprehend  things  and  events  in  the 
world,  to  group  them,  pertinently  and  exhaustively  to  describe 
them.  But  what  I  have  described  I  have  not  understood, 
but  only  proposed  to  understand.  For  the  first  time,  the 
described  thing  now  stands  there  in  all  its  mystery  before 
me,  and  I  must  now  begin  to  resolve  this  mystery;  for 
description  is  not  explanation,  but  prerequisite  of  explana- 
tion. The  next  step  to  this  end  is  the  discovery  and  exposi- 
tion of  laws — the  regularity  of  occurrence,  the  inviolable 
order  of  connection  and  sequence  in  things  and  events — 
equipping  them  with  the  idea  of  necessity.  I  can  now  ad- 
vance beyond  the  merely  given,  can  conclude  to  its  effects  and 
ascend  to  its  causes.  Order,  survey,  stability,  come  into  my 
knowledge,  which  begins  to  be  real  knowledge.  For  what 
we  call  knowledge  is  not  a  mere  cognition  of  phenomena  in 
their  accidental  and  individuated  manifoldness  and  promis- 
cuousness,  but  is  the  discovery  and  exhibition  of  the  laws  and 
general  forms  of  occurrence.  Otherwise  we  should  assfrefirate 
curiosities,  but  not  know.  To  discover  legality  in  all  happen- 
ing is  the  first  step  toward  the  goal  of  inquiry.     We  are  still 


214   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

far  from  having  taken  this  step,  and  it  is  more  than  doubtful 
whether  we  shall  ever  succeed  in  having  done  so.  But  if  we 
should  succeed,  should  we  really  have  substituted  explanation 
for  description,  understanding  in  the  place  of  mystery? 
Manifestly  not.  To  be  sure,  it  is  often  meant  so.  One 
thinks  that  one  has  understood  when  one  has  seen:  "This  is 
always  so,  it  has  always  behaved  this  way."  This  opin- 
ion is  naive.  All  that  it  amounts  to  is  that  the  region  of 
the  merely  described  has  become  larger  and  the  riddle 
harder.  For  now  we  are  confronted  with  things  phis  their 
still  more  marvelous  laws!  Laws  are  no  forces  and  impell- 
ing grounds.  They  make  nothing  happen  and  clear  up 
nothing.  And  as  formerly  of  things,  so  now  of  laws,  we  want 
to  know  how  they  came  to  be,  and  whence,  and  why  pre- 
cisely these  rather  than  others.  And  to  describe  them  in  turn 
but  stimulates  more  and  more  the  demand  for  explanation, 
whose  function  it  is  to  answer  these  very  questions.  Natural 
science  knows  this  better  than  ever.  It  calls  the  pre-explana- 
tory  process  "only  historical,"  and  for  the  merely  historical 
would  substitute  aetiology,  causal  explanation,  a  more  funda- 
mental explanation,  which  in  turn  would  make  these  laws 
superfluous,  because  it  penetrates  so  deeply  into  the  nature 
of  things  that  it  sees  why  they  follow  just  those  laws  and  no 
other  rules  of  change,  of  development,  of  becoming. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  transition  is  made  from  natural 
science  to  naturalism.  Naturalism  is  an  endeavor  at  con- 
sistent simplification,  and  at  gradual  regressus  in  a  large 
fashion.  Because  it  sets  out  to  explain  and  understand — 
and,  of  course,  according  to  the  maxim,  "Principia  non 
temere  esse  multiplicanda,"  to  explain  in  the  use  of  princi- 
ples as  few,  simple,  and  transparent  as  possible — it  is  incum- 
bent upon  it  to  try  first  of  all  to  refer  all  phenomena  to  one 
unitary  self-identical  arch-phenomenon,  which  admits  noth- 
ing outside  of  itself  or  above  itself,  which  is  a  law  unto  itself 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  Wobld-Views    215 

and  to  everything  else.  It  is  further  incumbent  upon  it  to 
refer  this,  its  all-phenomenon,  to  a  form  that  is  as  simple  and 
clear  as  possible,  and  then  to  refer  this  its  legality  to  as  few 
and  luminous  laws  as  possible,  which  are  themselves  to  be 
determined  by  calculation  and  formula— and,  behold,  all  is 
plain,  there  is  no  more  mystery,  the  Abyss  has  yielded  up 
her  secrets  to  the  omniscience  of  Naturalism !  The  "central" 
explanation  of  naturalism  is  added  to  the  "peripheral"  of 
science ! 

But  let  us  look  into  this  regressus,  this  magic  wand,  of 
naturalism  a  little  more  closely.  Let  us  take  as  an  illustra- 
tion the  formation  of  a  crystal.  Naturalism  would  have 
"explained"  it,  and  not  merely  described  it,  if  it  had  not 
stopped  with  exhibiting  the  forms  and  laws  according  to 
which  a  crystal  so  formed  arises  necessarily  out  of  the  bit- 
tern, but  had  gone  on  to  see  why,  why  always,  and  why  of 
inner  necessity,  these  forms  and  processes  of  organization 
arose  from  the  mixture  of  the  lye,  from  the  co-operative 
molecular  forces,  from  other  previously  given  and  more 
transparent  conditions.  In  this  way,  moreover,  the  "law"% 
would  be  explained,  and  thus  in  turn  really  made  super- 
fluous. One  must  make  clear  to  one's  self  when  and  where- 
explaining  takes  the  place  of  description :  it  is  when  processes 
may  be  resolved  into  simpler  processes  from  whose  combina- 
tion they  arise.  It  is  precisely  this  which  science  tries  to. 
do,  and  naturalism  hopes  that  this  will  be  definitively  and 
fundamentally  done,  and  the  mystery  of  existence  thereby 
resolved.  But  such  regressus  to  the  simpler  is  "explana- 
tion" only  in  case  the  simpler  is  itself  "clear"  and  not, 
merely  simple;  that  is,  only  in  case  I  can  see  why  and 
how  the  simpler  itself  was  brought  about  and  took  place; 
only  in  case,  that  is,  the  question  as  to  why  ceases,  because 
I,  perceiving  the  process,  immediately  see  at  the  same  time 
that  it  is  self-evident,  unquestionable,  and  not  requiring  to 


216    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

be  established.  If  this  is  not  the  case,  the  regressus  has 
only  befooled  me.  I  have  only  the  unexplained  in  place  of 
the  unexplained,  description  in  the  place  of  description,  and 
have  merely  adjourned  the  whole  problem.  Naturalism  sup- 
poses that  the  problem  ever  becomes  simpler  by  means  of 
these  easy  adjournments,  and  finally  reaches  a  point  where, 
having  become  entirely  simple,  it  is  solved  of  itself,  since  at 
such  a  point  to  describe  and  to  understand  are  one  and  the 
same  thing.  This  last  point  is  said  to  be  the  forces  of 
attraction  and  repulsion  with  which  the  least  self-identical 
particles  of  matter  are  equipped,  and  from  whose  infinitely 
manifold  interplay  all  higher  forms  of  activity,  all  combi- 
nations of  higher  phenomena,  emerge.  But  the  crucial 
question  still  remains:  Whence,  then,  thus  affirming  the 
universal  sameness  and  unity  of  the  ultimate  particles  and 
forces,  come  the  principles  of  manifoldness,  for  this  our 
world,  consisting  of  pure  manifoldness,  and  the  grounds 
of  the  combinations  to  higher  unities  and  to  higher  result- 
ants of  force?  But,  apart  from  this,  it  is  clear  that  we  have 
not  even  here  reached  the  last  point.  For  is  "attraction" 
at  a  distance,  vis  a  fronts,  a  matter  which  is  clear  of  itself, 
and  not  rather  the  most  vexatious  basic  riddle  which  chal- 
lenges explanation  ?  And  therefore  one  seeks  to  penetrate  to 
the  last  point  of^ll,  and  to  attempt  the  last  regress  of  all — 
the  setting  aside  of  all  special  "forces,"  the  regress  of  all 
motion  and  of  all  "action"  to  impact  which  elucidates  all 
that  is  enigmatic,  and  the  modus  operandi  of  which  is  set 
forth  by  the  law  of  the  parallelogram  of  forces  so  univocally 
and  inviolably.  Law?  Set  forth?  And  therefore  only 
description  still?  Certainly  only  description,  and  nothing 
in  the  least  explained.  Suppose  it  were  true,  which  yet  is 
pure  Utopia,  that  all  riddles  and  mysteries  of  nature  are  to 
be  referred  to  the  "push  and  pull"  of  matter  in  motion  and 
its  simplest  laws,  they  would  be  simply  swallowed  up  in  one 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    217 

general  riddle  which  resides  at  the  bottom  of  all  things,  and 
is  all  the  more  colossal  since  it  comprehends  all  besides. 
For  impact,  the  transference  of  motion,  combination  of 
motion  according  to  the  law  of  the  parallelogram  of  forces — 
all  this  is  pure  description  of  processes  whose  inner  ground 
we  do  not  k)iotv  as  science  reckons  knowledge,  which  simply 
confront  us;  they  are,  indeed,  but  they  are  not  clear,  not 
self-evident,  but  one  of  Haeckel's  WeUrdtsel,  into  which  he 
pours  such  a  flood  of — darkness!  The  same  sphinx  which 
was  apparently — but  only  apparently — banished  from  pe- 
riphery and  foreground  now  stares  at  us  from  the  center  and 
bottom  of  things.  In  every  instance,  we  absolutely  do  not 
know  why  precisely  these  things  well  up  from  the  un wither- 
ing fountain  of  nature,  nor  what  that  fountain  is,  nor  what 
is  still  concealed  in  its  mysterious  depths.  To  refer  the 
mystery  of  a  to  b,  which  is  no  clearer  than  a,  and  that  of  b 
to  c,  which  is  no  clearer  than  either,  and  so  on,  is  to  explain 
nothing;  and — a  matter  to  be  elaborated  later — to  say  that 
there  is  nothing  in  a  but  its  being  causally  and  legally 
referred  to  6,  and  nothing  in  b  but  its  being  thus  referred 
to  c,  and  so  on,  is  to  fail  to  account  for  the  manifoldness  of 
all  and  the  novelty  and  uniqueness  of  each. 

In  brief:  We  have  seen  that  empiricism,  which  naturalism 
erects  into  a  world-view,  ojffers  in  every  case  an  explanation 
which  is  useful  and  sufficient  as  regards  the  concatenation  of 
phenomena  and  the  conditions  under  which  they  are  produced; 
but  in  every  case  we  have  also  seen  the  failure  of  empiricism 
to  render  a  final  explanation.  For  passivity  always  implies 
activity,  the  external  implies  the  internal,  mechanism  implies 
spontaneity,  the  acquired  implies  the  original.  If  everything 
couM  be  explained  by  the  external,  this  external  would  again 
imply  something  external  to  itself;  that  is  to  say,  something 
else  beside  itself ;  and,  if  we  must  always  go  in  this  way  from 
one  thing  to  something  else,  we  shall  never  reach  true  being. 


218   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

To  explain  the  internal  by  the  external,  activity  by  passivity, 
spontaneity  by  mechanical  laws,  the  primitive  by  the  acquired, 
is  to  explain  everything  by  nothing.^ 

2.  The  naturalistic  negation  of  dependence  and  teleology 
— these  may  be  treated  together — is  dogmatic  and  indefen- 
sible. It  will  be  observed  that  the  word  "dependence" — 
so  significant  in  Schleiermacher's  Glauhenslehre — is  used 
instead  of  the  word  "creation."  To  be  sure,  the  Christian 
idea  of  creation,  the  creation-faith  one  would  better  say, 
does  not  possess  the  character  of  a  scientific  explanation  of 
the  world.  But  it  is  so  burdened  with  inadequate  ideas, 
especially  with  the  anthropomorphic,  that  it  may  be  well  not 
to  use  it.  Still,  this  faith  has  a  content  which  piety  cannot 
surrender  without  sustaining  irreparable  injury — namely,  the 
deep  self-authenticating  conviction  that  we  and,  with  us,  all 
existence  do  not  repose  in  our  own  strength  and  self-suffi- 
ciency, but  on  foundations  outside  empirical  reality.  For  this 
reason  we  shall  not  be  particular  to  avoid  the  old  term.  The 
sound  kernel  of  the  old  creation-faith  is  the  primacy  of 
Spirit;  and  if  it  be  urged  that  life  is  a  product  of  physical 
and  chemical  forces,  the  answer  of  both  scientific  and  philo- 
sophic reflection  is  that  this  force,  that  nature  itself,  is  Spirit.^ 

1 "  I  do  not  believe  that  humanity  will  ever  limit  its  inner  relation  to  reality  to 
scientific  knowledge.  If  man  were  a  purely  intellectual  being,  he  might  content 
himself  with  the  fragments  of  knowledge  which  natural  inquiry  little  by  little  aggre- 
gates. But  he  is  not  mere  understanding,  he  is  also  and  above  all  else  a  willing  and 
feeling  being.  And  it  is  in  this  side  of  his  nature  that  religion  has  its  deepest  roots. 
Feelings  of  humility,  reverence,  yearning  after  the  perfect,  with  which  his  heart  is 
filled  as  he  contemplates  nature  and  history,  determine  his  inner  relation  to  reality 
more  immediately  and  more  profoundly  than  the  concepts  and  formula  of  science  are 
able  to  do.  From  these  grows  the  confidence  that  the  world  is  not  a  senseless  play 
of  blind  forces,  but  the  revelation  of  a  good  and  great  Being,  which  he  may  joyously 
acknowledge  to  be  akin  to  his  own  innermost  being.  For  the  peculiar  essence  of  every 
religious  faith  is  the  confidence  that  the  special  nature  of  reality  reveals  itself  to  me 
in  that  which  I  love  and  adore  as  the  highest  and  the  best  —  is  the  certainty  that 
the  good  and  the  perfect,  toward  which  the  deepest  yearning  of  my  own  will  tends, 
is  the  ground  and  the  goal  of  all  things Man  is  more  than  a  registering  appa- 
ratus of  the  real;  therefore  he  has  not  merely  science,  but  also  poetry  aud  art,  faith 
and  religion." — Padlsen,  Einleitung  in  die  Philosophic,  p.  8. 

2  "  Once  materialism  is  abandoned  and  dualism  found  untenable,  a  spiritualistic 
monism  remains  the  one  stable  position.    It  is  only  in  terms  of  mind  that  we  can 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    219 

In  this  connection  it  is  desirable  to  specify  in  a  few  sentences 
what  is  inalienable  to  this  old  faith — call  it  feeling  of 
dependence  with  Schleiermacher,  or  idea  of  creation  with 
the  church — and  thus  indicate  the  terms  upon  which  it  can 
enter  into  pact  with  modern  intellectual  life.  For  one  thing, 
this  faith  does  not  engage  to  decide  the  problem  as  to  whether 
the  world  is  limited  or  unlimited  in  space  and  time — a  prob- 
lem which,  moreover,  it  does  not  appear  that  the  "critical" 
philosophy  can  solve,  but  can  only  exhibit  as  an  antinomy. 
But  our  faith  is  not  out  of  harmony  with  either  side  of  the 
antinomy,  and  is  even  more  in  harmony  with  the  suspended 
judgment  of  critical  thought.  For  another  thing,  unlike 
scientific  philosophy,  as  just  pointed  out,  it  does  not  pass 
upon  the  question  as  to  the  essence  of  matter.  All  it  requires 
touching  this  issue  is  the  recognition  that  the  world — the 
presupposition  of  our  finitude,  indeed — is,  according  to  the 
will  and  purpose  of  God,  the  basis  and  raw  material  of  our 
conduct  and  of  a  divine  kingdom  of  moral  personalities, 
wherein  no  person  is  cast  to  the  void  when  the  pile  is  com- 
plete, no  one  is  mere  means,  but  all  are  also  ends.  Inci- 
dentally, it  may  be  added  that  no  mortal  blow  is  given  to  this 
faith  by  the  scientific  transformation  of  the  geocentric  picture 
of  the  world  which  underlies  the  biblical  story  of  creation. 
In  view  of  the  degradation  of  the  earth  to  a  tiny  body  in  the 
cosmic  system,  faith  cannot,  indeed,  contest  the  extension 
of  the  eternal  purpose  of  redemption  to  other  worlds  than 
ours,  and  it  is  true  that  our  traditions  and  our  training  have 
inured  our  feelings  to  the  idea  that  all  the  stars  were  set 
agoing  for  the  sake  of  the  Star  of  Bethlehem,  The  imagi- 
nation of  the  apostle  seems  to  have  had  this  reach: 

For  it  was  the  good  pleasure  of  the  Father  ....  through  Him 
to  reconcile  all  things  unto  Himself,  having  made  peace  through 

understand  the  unity,  activity,  and  regularity  that  nature  presents.  In  so  under- 
standing we  see  that  nature  is  Spirit." — Waed,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism;  see 
Vol.  11,  pp.  205-83. 


220    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

the  blood  of  His  cross;  through  Him,  I  say,  whether  things  upon 
the  earth,  or  things  in  the  heavens.* 

It  is  simply  required  that  the  creation-faith  shall  cling  to 
the  conviction  that  the  mind  and  will  of  God  are  disclosed  to 
us  in  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth  as  revealed  in  Jesus 
Christ — a  kingdom  that  in  idea  admits  of  extensive  but  no 
intensive  enrichment.  Finally,  present-day  science  forges 
forward  still  to  an  evolutionary  theoretical  explanation  of 
the  present  structure  of  the  world,  especially  of  the  present 
biological  forms  of  the  organic  world.  And  the  question 
which  vitally  affects  Christianity — it  will  soon  be  the  burden 
of  the  rest  of  this  chapter — is  as  to  whether  our  faith  in 
general  and  our  creation-faith  in  particular  can  justify  its 
fundamental  opposition  to  the  evolutionistic  metaphysics,  if 
metaphysics  it  may  be  called,  of  the  naturalistic  view  of  the 
world  which  has  claimed  modern  natural  science  as  its  ally. 
Since  this  faith  requires  the  recognition  that  development 
itself,  with  the  formations  that  emerge  thereby,  is  the  actual- 
ization of  "creative"  divine  ends  and  must  serve  the  absolute 
purposes  of  God,  it  is  evident  that  naturalistic  evolutionism 
is  incompatible  therewith. 

"With  these  words  upon  the  subject,  the  interests  of  faith 
which  require  to  be  maintained  in  their  integrity  are  stated. 
Man  and  man's  world  dependent  for  their  existence  and  con- 
tinuance upon  God,  whose  eternal  purpose  is  expressed  and 
fulfilled  in  them — such  is  the  conviction  and  language  of 
religion ;  the  cosmos  self-dependent  temporally  and  spatially, 
and  purposeless  as  religion  counts  purpose — such  is  the  con- 
viction and  language  of  naturalism,  which  claims  thereby  to 
utter  the  necessary  inference  from  the  outcome  of  natural 
science ;  this  is  the  square  issue  joined  by  religion  and  natu- 
ralism, and  the  reader  should  not  fail  to  appreciate  how 
grave  and  far-reaching  the  issue  is.      To  this  end  it  may  not 

iCol.  1:19,  20. 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    221 

be  amiss,  at  the  risk  of  what  to  some  may  seem  to  be  needless 
and  irksome  repetition,  to  recapitulate  the  historical  develop- 
ment of  thought  and  experience  which  is  responsible  for  the 
present  situation,  so  painful  for  all  those  who  cannot  repu- 
diate the  new  science  without  unveraciousness  and  self -stulti- 
fication, nor  surrender  the  old  eternal  values,  into  the  making 
of  which  the  blood  of  the  race  has  gone,  without  leaving  life 
cold  and  bare  as  granite.  However  brave,  or,  rather,  stoical 
and  imperturbable,  the  countenance  may  be,  it  cannot  quite 
conceal  the  deep  pain  and  pathos  as  its  treasures  one  by  one 
melt  away,  and  the  friendly  and  familiar  universe  is  robbed 
of  "its  soul  of  loveliness." 

It  is  the  collision  between  science  and  religion,  as  it  con- 
cerns the  world  of  nature,  with  which  we  have  still  to  do. 
Modern  investigation  has  undoubtedly  shown  that  the  picture 
of  nature  with  which  the  traditional  form  of  religion  is  in- 
separably convolved  is  untenable.  The  conception  of  nature 
held  by  ecclesiastical  Christianity  still  corresponds  to  that  old, 
naive  mode  of  thought  which  obtained  till  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  was  the  ancient  cosmology.  Christianity  did 
not  forsake  it,  but  appropriated  it.  The  supramundane  Deity 
forms  the  starting-point  of  life;  the  world  is  a  work  of  his 
wisdom  and  goodness,  a  witness  of  his  glory.  Man  is  so 
related  to  God  as  to  be  exalted  above  all  merely  natural  and 
animal  existence.  The  turning-point  in  the  world's  history 
is  man — his  fall  and  restoration  decide  the  fate  of  all  besides. 
Even  lower  nature  seems  to  point  to  the  kernel  of  it  all,  to 
the  mighty  drama  whose  center  is  the  life  and  passion  of  the 
Redeemer. 

This  picture  has  suffered  disintegration  through  the 
incessant  and  indefatigable  work  of  modern  natural  science. 
The  revolution  of  astronomy,  the  establishment  of  modern 
exact  science,  the  rise  of  a  scientific  doctrine  of  evolution, 
have  point  by  point  reversed  man's  relation  to  nature.     Man's 


222   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

abode  has  shriveled  to  nothingness  over  against  the  infinitude 
of  the  world;  nature  has  won  complete  self-dependence  over 
against  man — man,  first  and  last,  its  creature  and  not  its  lord, 
himself  appropriated  by  nature,  reduced  to  nature,  trans- 
formed to  a  nature-being.  How  profoundly  the  inveterate 
religious  ideas  are  affected  by  these  changes! 

As  a  consequence  of  the  Copernican  revolution,  the  whole 
picture  of  reality  of  the  older  religious  conviction  was 
destroyed.  The  religious  fantasy  of  the  home  beyond  the 
stars,  the  opposition  of  heaven  and  earth  mortised  into  the 
very  structure  of  Christian  dogmas,  the  beyond  of  time  and 
space — this  was  gone.  The  hypothesis  of  God  became  super- 
fluous in  every  science,  even  that  of  religion  itself.  And  if 
our  earth  came  to  be  but  a  dot  compared  with  the  shoreless- 
ness  of  the  All,  how  could  the  little  drama  enacted  here 
determine  the  weal  and  woe  of  immeasurable  existence  ?  But 
the  elder  Christianity  made  it  central  in  its  cardinal  doctrines 
of  creation  and  judgment,  of  sin  and  grace.  Can  such  a 
Christianity  still  maintain  itself  as  a  "world-power"  when  it 
represents  only  the  special  experience  of  this  grain  of  sand 
on  the  shore  of  the  infinite  sea? 

To  this  astronomic  change  as  regards  the  extension  of 
nature  must  be  supplied  the  change  in  the  inner  structure  of 
nature  effected  by  the  exact  sciences.  Vital,  psychic,  inner 
forces,  impulses,  ends,  were  banished  therefrom,  and  natural 
law  took  their  place — inviolable,  universal  natural  law. 
Nature  became  a  closed  system.  It  is  here  that  the  clash  is 
severest  upon  church  doctrine — on  account  of  the  problem  of 
miracle,  the  affirmation  of  intervention  in  the  course  of 
nature  in  the  interest  of  religious  ends.  The  idea  of  such 
intervention  involved  no  great  difficulty  so  long  as  the  order 
was  something  superimposed  upon  things  by  God,  was  a 
habit  of  the  divine  conduct ;  but  it  was  different  when  natural 
law  came  to  be  looked  upon  as  residing  in  things,  as  belong- 


Natukalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    223 

ing  to  the  essence  of  things,  and  when  the  same  simple  funda- 
mental forms  were  recognized  in  the  infinite  manifoldness  of 
phenomena.  Thereupon  miracle  became  a  violation  of  that 
essence;  and  irruption  at  one  point  was  looked  upon  as  a 
negation  of  the  total  order  of  nature.  Nature  without  miracle 
— this  amounts  to  a  confession  of  scientific  faith,  and  has 
transformed  sensible  miracle  from  a  support  to  a  burden  of 
faith,  so  far  as  the  scientific  habitude  of  mind  is  concerned. 
There  is  no  church  doctrine  whose  integrity  is  not  shattered 
by  this  development.  And  miracle  is  only  the  climax  of  the 
collision  between  the  natural-science  and  the  religious  mode 
of  thought.  Nature  pursues  its  course  unmindful  of  man's 
weal  or  woe,  indifferent  to  his  fate.  Earthquake  and  storm, 
water  and  fire,  overwhelm  and  destroy  without  respect  of 
persons,  careless  of  spiritual  values. 

"  Nature  is  cruel,  man  is  sick  of  blood ; 
Nature  is  stubborn,  man  would  fain  adore." 

Natural  science  went  on  its  unerring  way,  and  more  and 
more  won  general  assent.  But  one  region  of  nature  offered 
unconquerable  resistance,  as  already  said,  till  the  nineteenth 
century — the  region  of  organic  life,  culminating  in  man. 
How  could  organism,  so  complex,  so  adaptive,  so  fine,  owe 
its  origin  to  a  mechanical  collection  of  lifeless  elements? 
Here  was  an  impregnable  fortress  into  which  the  disciples 
of  religion  could  retire.  Here  was  the  evidence  of  the  power 
of  Reason  operating  purposefully.  But  now,  at  the  end  of 
the  ages,  the  modern  doctrine  of  evolution  grew  up,  and  the 
natural-science  mode  of  thought  was  transferred  to  this  last 
abode  of  religion.  The  forms  of  living  beings  likewise  fell 
into  flux;  even  the  highest  organism  seemed  to  be  a  result 
of  slow  growth  from  imperceptible  beginnings.  But  the 
impelling  power  of  this  movement  was  not  force  controlling 
from  within,  but  the  actual  clash  of  living  beings  in  the 
struggle  of  existence,  the  ceaseless  selection  of  the  stronger 


224   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

in  this  struggle,  which  slowly,  little  by  little,  in  illimitable 
time,  produces  purposeful  formations  without  there  being 
any  purpose!  The  last  region  of  nature  is  thus  conquered 
by  the  natural-science  mode  of  thought.  And  thus  religious 
faith  lost  this  support  also.  Man,  with  his  whole  being,  is 
sucked  into  nature.  Hence  natural  impulse,  the  impulse  of 
self-preservation,  determines  his  "conduct."  No  longer  is 
there  anything  intrinsically  true,  intrinsically  good,  but  the 
true  and  the  good  are  such  in  so  far  as  they  are  means  to 
self-preservation,  on  account  of  their  "utility"  in  the  struggle 
of  existence.  Being  useful,  however,  they  must  "adapt" 
themselves  ever  anew  to  the  changing  situation.  Thus  all 
intrinsically  valid  and  eternal  truth,  the  ethical  apprehension 
of  existence,  yields  to  a  biological  conception  which  knows 
nothing  absolute,  nothing  worthful  in  itself.  Is  this  mode 
of  thought  compatible  with  religion?  with  Christianity? 
Does  not  Christianity  exalt  man  above  all  that  is  merely 
natural,  honor  a  supramundane  core  in  him,  fulfil  him  with 
eternal  truth? 

It  is  idle  to  reproach  individuals  for  this  state  of  things. 
No  one  did  it.  It  is  bound  up  in  the  bundle  of  life  of  the 
modern  world  which  has  been  in  the  making  for  half  a 
millennium.  It  is  an  irrepressible  conflict  between  two 
views  of  the  world.  To  be  sure,  a  pitiable  apologetic  would 
like  to  show  that  the  case  is  not  so  bad  as  at  first  sight  it 
seems,  that  there  are  "gaps"  in  modern  investigation,  and 
that  there  is  therefore  still  room  for  the  old  way  of  looking 
at  things.  Such  attempts  are  to  be  set  aside  as  depotentia- 
tion  and  obscuration  of  the  problem.  One  should  publicly 
and  honorably  admit  the  profound  chasm  between  the  reli- 
gious and  scientific  views  of  the  world.  But  if  one  must  thus 
grant  the  untenability  of  the  traditional  religious  ideas  over 
against  modern  natural  science,  does  one  thereby  assent 
necessarily  to  the  disintegration  of  all  religion?     Only  on 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    225 

one  condition:  only  in  case  the  world  of  natural  science  is 
known  to  be  all  there  is  of  reality,  is  itself  total  and  ultimate 
reality ;  only  in  case  this  world  is  so  self-constituted,  so  self- 
closed,  that  we  can  nowhere  burst  through  it  or  get  beyond 
it.  That  such  is  the  case  is  extremely  doubtful,  from  both 
the  religious  and  the  scientific  points  of  view.  For  how  has 
this  modern  scientific  picture  of  the  ivorld  arisen?  It  is  not 
self-evident  that  this  picture  embraces  us  men  without 
remainder.  This  picture  is  not  a  donation  to  man  apart 
from  any  pains  of  his  own.  It  was  wrested  from  the  ideas 
of  immediate  sense-perception  by  the  hardest  of  conflicts. 
The  senses  are  on  the  side  of  the  old  view  of  the  world, 
natural  and  religious — hence  the  kinship  between  naturalism 
and  supernaturalism !  But  the  new  picture  of  nature  by 
modern  science  is  a  creation  of  spiritual  labor.  The  new 
world  is  not  a  datum,  not  something  found  already  made; 
it  is  formed  hij  mail's  own  strength.  How  could  we  form  it 
without  disclosing  thereby  our  spiritual  character,  and  in- 
troducing it  into  our  work?  This  is  the  imperishable  merit 
and  message  of  the  Kantian  epistemology — with  Descartes, 
the  father  of  modern  philosophy,  as  forerunner,  since  he  pro- 
claimed the  thinking  self  as  the  fixed  point  over  against  all 
doubt,  and  especially  as  the  starting-point  for  the  construc- 
tion of  our  world.  To  begin  with  the  subject ;  not  to  pass  from 
the  world  to  man,  but  from  the  man  to  the  world;  to  transfer 
the  center  of  gravity  from  the  object  to  the  subject — this  is 
characteristic  of  that  modern  mode  of  thought  which  con- 
serves our  values.  And  Kant  is  the  master  of  them  who 
know  from  this  standpoint.  To  set  out  from  the  subject 
involves  a  complete  transformation,  a  reversal,  of  the  old 
picture  of  the  world.  "Matter"  appears  no  longer  as  a 
communication,  or  donation,  to  the  senses,  but  as  a  product 
of  the  labor  of  thought.  Attention  is  directed  to  the  prog- 
ress rather  than  to  the  result  of  knowledge.     Activity  is  duly 


226   The  Finality  or  the  Christian  Religion 

recognized.  The  investigator  is  not  forgotten  in  the  inves- 
tigation of  nature.  This  mode  of  thought  is  entirely  compat- 
ible with  natural  science,  but  not  at  all  with  naturalism,  i.  e., 
the  equating  or  identifying  of  sensible  nature  with  reality. 
For  naturalism  may  be  defined  as  any  philosophy  which 
views  the  world  of  the  senses,  given  in  space  and  time,  as  the 
sole  reality.  (In  naturalistic  morality  man  as  a  sense-being 
is  the  measure  of  all  things,  the  judge  concerning  good  and 
evil.)  It  is  characteristic  of  naturalism  to  leave  out  of  account, 
in  its  picture  of  the  world,  the  thinking  spirit  and  its  activity, 
and  on  this  account  naturalism  reverts  to  the  pre-critical  view 
of  the  world.  Criticism  has  made  it  clear  that  we  do  not 
have  the  whole  of  reality  in  the  picture  of  the  world  sketched 
by  nature-science,  that  reality  has  something  else  along  with 
it— a  something  else  of  which  the  fact  of  natural  science  itself 
is  the  most  striking  proof,  being  itself  a  creation  of  the  think- 
ing spirit,  spanning  and  elaborating  phenomena. 

So,  then,  natural  science  itself  announces  a  jjZms  over  and 
above  sensible  nature.  Is  this  j^^'^^^  totally  revealed  and 
exhausted  in  this  announcement?  Are  this  j;Z?<s  and  the 
natural-science  performance  coincident?  It  is  not  so.  All 
that  is  subsumed  under  the  category  of  culture  contains  some- 
thing new  over  and  above  nature:  the  structure  of  an  inde- 
pendent inner  life,  the  development  of  an  inner  world  com- 
prehending and  concatenating  all  manifoldness.  A  collective 
life  also  arises  in  which  the  individual  shares,  and  through 
which  the  individual  is  exalted  above  the  mere  natural  impulse 
of  self-preservation.  We  strive  after  truth.  And  truth  is 
something  that  transcends  the  opinions  of  individuals ;  some- 
thing that  is  independent  of  all  human  assent;  something, 
too,  which  does  not  serve  our  petty  human  interests,  but  is 
able  to  overcome  and  to  judge  them.  Such  truth  overarches 
our  human  living  and  struggling  more  certainly  than  the 
fixed  firmament  of  the  old  way  of  thinking,  the  terrestrial 


Natuealistic  and  Religious  World-Views    227 

sphere.  Then  there  is  also  our  idea  of  the  good.  And, 
men  may  say  what  they  will,  it  is  different  from  the  idea  of 
the  useful.  The  useful  belongs  in  the  pale  of  natural  exist- 
ence, serves  its  end,  and  constantly  changes  its  requirements 
with  the  changing  situation.  But  the  good  mounts  above 
petty  human  ends.*  It  gives  its  gifts,  affirming  that  they 
belong  to  a  new  world,  that  they  are  not  sprung  from  the 
*' times,"  that  they  enjoy  a  stability  of  their  own,  judging 
the  times.  Not  to  be  a  natural  being,  but  to  be  person- 
ality, to  originate  a  kingdom  of  personalities  in  which  Love 
is  King, 

"And  no  one  shall  work  for  money, 
And  no  one  shall  work  for  fame. 
But  each  for  the  joy  of  the  working" 

— this  is  the  goal  of  development,  and  it  is  the  merit  of  the 
modern  time  to  have  some  new  glimpse  of  the  far-off  divine 
event.  Thus  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  not  a  mere  i^lus  of 
nature,  but  the  beginning  of  a  new  order;  a  new  kind  of 
reality  is  manifest  in  it.  It  is  not  an  appendage  of  the 
natural  process,  but  becomes  self-dependent,  organizing  a 
kingdom  of  its  own.  The  recognition  of  this  new  kind  of 
reality  changes  essentially  the  whole  face  of  the  world.  For 
now  nature  no  longer  signifies  the  whole  of  the  world,  but 
only  a  stage  beyond  which  the  movement  of  the  world- 
process  progresses.  If  one  chooses  to  view  the  two  worlds  as 
separate,  the  higher  world  must  be  the  principle  of  the 
lower,  personality  the  principle  of  evolution.  The  world  is 
more  than  nature,  and  we  do  not  experience  spirit  from  the 
standpoint  of  nature,  but  nature  from  the  standpoint  of  spirit. 
But  while  this  line  of  thought  suffices  to  establish  the 
dependence  of  the  natural  on  the  spiritual,  the  independence 

1  "  If  the  ground  of  things  were  the  will  to  live  at  any  cost,  we  should  be  utterly 
unable  to  understand  the  voluntary  death  of  a  Leonidas  or  a  Socrates,  and  of  all 
such  in  whom  there  is  something  mightier  than  the  will-to-live." — Webee,  History  of 
Modem  Philosophy,  p.  602. 


228    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

of  the  human  spirit  over  nature,  which  the  ends  of  morality 
require,  it  may  be  supplemented  by  other  considerations  in  the 
interests  of  the  more  specifically  religious.  Still  postponing 
the  idea  of  evolution  for  special  consideration,  we  may  revert 
again  to  the  interconnection  of  things  and  events  of  which 
naturalism  makes  so  much — to  the  all-inclusiveness  of  the 
causal  system.  We  may  turn  again  to  astronomy  for  illus- 
tration—  the  heavenly  bodies  forever  circling,  reciprocally 
conditioned,  requiring  no  condition  outside  themselves, 
betraying  no  dependence  but  reciprocal  dependence.  We 
saw  how  naturalism  spread  this  independence  and  self-sufS- 
ciency  of  the  astronomic  world  over  all  reality. 

It  is  true  that  astronomy  does  assume  the  thoroughgoing 
legality  of  all  cosmic  processes  which  unites  the  near  and 
the  far  in  strictest  harmony.  But  does  this  assumption 
signify  anything  with  reference  to  the  dependence  and  con- 
ditionateness  of  the  world?  Would  lawlessness  be  more 
suitable  in  the  interests  of  religion  than  fixed  legality? 
Would  a  world  without  nexus  and  law,  full  of  capricious 
phenomena,  the  theater  of  an  unbridled  play  of  causes,  be 
on  that  account  more  "dependent"  and  "conditioned"  than 
any  other  world?  If  there  were  no  other  reasons  for  doing 
so,  lawlessness  and  irregularity  would  not  afford  the  least 
grounds  for  transcending  the  world,  and  positing  it  as 
depending  on  something  other  than  itself.  Besides,  a  self- 
dependent  and  self-sufficient  existence  could  be  conceived  as 
a  lawless  play  of  chance  quite  as  easily  as  a  well-ordered 
cosmos  could  be  —  more  easily,  indeed,  since  it  goes  without 
saying  that  such  a  heap  of  disorder  could  not  be  thought  of 
as  a  world  grounded  in  Divine  Reason.  Order  and  law  are 
not  excluded,  but  required,  by  faith  in  the  God  of  the 
Christian  religion — are  preconditions  of  the  conviction  that 
they  are  dependent  upon  God.  The  paradox  may  be  pro- 
pounded that  only  a  cosmos  which,  by  its  cause  and  law  and 


Naturalistic  and  Keligious  World-Views    229 

order,  makes  the  impression  of  self-sufficiency,  can  be  believed 
to  be  in  real  dependence  upon  God,  Our  point  then  is, 
first,  that  the  world  brought  under  law  is,  so  far  forth  as 
this  fact  is  concerned,  as  dependent,  or  conditioned,  or  ''con- 
tingent," as  any  other  kind  of  world  would  be;  and,  secondly, 
that  instead  of  the  orderliness  on  which  naturalism  rests  its 
case,  negating,  it  rather  involves  faith  in  God.  But  in 
adducing  these  considerations,  it  is  not  meant  that  they  con- 
stitute a  proof  of  dependence  —  proof,  that  is,  which  compels 
the  assent  of  the  intellect;  it  is  meant,  rather,  that  the 
scientific  principle  of  natural  causation  and  the  philosophical 
conception  of  the  cosmos  in  no  wise  exclude  the  possibility 
and  the  right  of  the  religious  conviction  of  the  dependence 
of  the  world  upon  a  supramundane  basis.  If  science  cannot 
affirm — which  is  not  to  be  too  readily  conceded — it  at  all 
events  cannot  deny  such  conviction  without  thereby  becom- 
ing dogmatic;  that  is,  ceasing  to  be  scientific.  Moreover, 
science  cannot  consistently  escape  skepticism  with  reference 
to  its  own  conviction  that  the  structure  of  the  world  is  such 
as  to  satisfy  the  intellectual  need  of  the  human  spirit  to 
know,  if  it  doubts  that  this  same  world  meets  the  needs  of 
other  sides  of  the  human  spirit.  But  one  of  these  needs  is 
that  the  world  should  be  the  revelation  of  a  Good  and  Great 
Being  who  works  all  things  together  for  good.  How  can  I 
be  sure  that  reality  is  faithful  to  the  needs  of  the  intellect, 
if  it  be  faithless  to  the  needs  of  the  will  and  the  feelings, 
which  are  my  central  possessions?  Consistently,  science 
must  itself  participate  in  our  religious  conviction  of  the 
fidelity  of  what  is  to  what  is  good. 

But  in  saying  so  much  we  have  already  passed  over  to 
the  question  of  teleology.  If  the  world  be  God's  world,  it 
is  itself,  with  all  that  is  in  it,  for  the  sake  of  ends  and 
directed  to  a  good.  It  is  pervaded  by  eternal  ideals,  and 
the  object  of  divine  providence  and  guidance.     But  natural 


230   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

science  j&nds  no  ideas  or  ends  in  nature,  and  naturalism,  with 
its  characteristic  dogmatism,  goes  on  to  assume  that  natural 
science  is  competent  to  exhaust  reality,  and  hence  to  deny 
the  existence  of  such  ends  and  ideas.  The  whole  is  a  closed 
system  of  causes,  a  great  blind  causal  bustle,  with  reference 
to  which  there  is  no  sense  in  asking  what  it  is  all  about,  but 
only  what  the  causes  are  that  keep  it  up. 

An  introductory  observation  will  be  in  order. 

The  opposition  and  aversion  of  the  natural  investigator  to 
ideas  and  ends  are  not  at  bottom  religious  at  all — are  not 
antagonism  of  natural  science  to  the  religious  view  of  the 
world.  They  are  the  antagonism  of  natural  science,  or,  rather, 
of  the  modern  view  of  the  world,  to  the  medieeval- Aristotelian 
view  of  the  world. ^  The  latter,  moreover,  was  not  in  and  of 
itself  intrinsically  religious,  but  primarily  a  theory  of  nature 
and  an  attempt  to  interpret  natural,  and  especially  develop- 
mental, processes,  which  could  be  religiously  colorless,  or 
capable  of  a  naturalistic  turn.  It  was  the  doctrine  of  entelechy 
and  of  the  formae  substantiales.  To  explain  a  thing,  it  was 
said  that  the  idea  of  the  finished  thing,  its  "form,"  resided  in 
the  initial  state  of  the  thing  and  determined  and  managed  its 
development.  This  "form,"  the  end  striven  for,  resided  in 
the  thing  "potentially"  or  "ideally"  or  "virtually"  from  the 
beginning,  encroached  as  causa  finalis,  and  determined  the 
becoming.  Now,  it  is  this  doctrine,  and  such  doctrine  as  this, 
that  present  natural  science  reproaches.  Natural  science 
urges  that  this  is  no  explanation  at  all,  but  a  mere  name  for 
the  process,  which  is  precisely  the  thing  required  to  be 
explained.  The  purpose  of  science  is  to  exhibit  the  play  of 
causes  which  kept  up  the  development  to  its  consummation. 
The  supposed  causa  finalis  is  only  an  asylum  ignorantiae; 
that  is,  the  problem  itself,  but  not  its  solution. 

1  It  is  the  genius  of  the  Aristotelian  spirit  to  seek  to  know  causality— teleologi- 
cally  ;  of  the  modern  spirit,  teleology  causally. 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    231 

Whether  present  natural  science  is  right  in  this  or  not, 
whether  it  neglects  justifiable  points  in  the  old  notion  of 
entelechy,  especially  whether  it  can  have  a  doctrine  of  living 
things  without  this  notion,  it  is  at  all  events  certain  that 
piety  need  no  longer  interest  itself  in  this  controversy.  The 
religious  conviction  of  ruling  "ends,"  "ideas,"  "guidance,"  is 
indifferent  to  the  mode  of  the  actualization  of  final  results; 
it  is  concerned  entirely  with  a  special  and  peculiar  worth  of 
that  which  is  reached  and  actualized.  And  we  can  speak  of 
aims,  ends,  guidance,  and  process  only  in  so  far  as  we  our- 
selves have  capacity  to  feel  and  acknowledge  worth,  meaning, 
significance  of  things.  But  this  is  a  task  for  which  natural 
science  is  not  at  all  competent.  It  can  only  look  into  the 
way  things  have  come  to  be;  but  whether  this  result  has 
higher  worth  than  that  result,  or  less,  or  none  at  all,  ihis 
science  as  such  cannot  find  out  or  deny.  Such  evaluation 
does  not  lie  within  its  domain.  This  is  what  science  itself 
says. 

But  to  piety  the  world  is  the  object  of  teleological  contem- 
plation. And  to  such  contemplation,  in  the  sense  here  meant, 
the  strict  causal  way  of  looking  at  things  on  the  part  of  natu- 
ral science  is  not  only  not  hostile,  but  is,  rather,  necessary. 
Natural  science  seeks  to  apprehend  the  actualities  of  our 
world,  man  included,  as  results  of  a  vast  process  of  causal 
development  under  law.  If,  now,  those  results  appear  to 
our  evaluating  insight  as  meaningful  and  worthful,  their 
causal  explanation  is  in  no  way  trenched  upon  or  modified 
thereby.  It  is  simply  that  they  are  put  in  a  new  light  and 
reveal  a  peculiarity  which  was  not  to  be  discovered  before, 
but  which  constitutes  their  best  essence.  They  become  a 
rigidly  concatenated  system  of  means.  Teleology  is  trans- 
ferred into  the  ground  and  "beginning,"  into  the  funda- 
mental conditions  and  original  factors  of  the  world  itself. 
The  strict  system  of  conditions  and  causes  is  nothing  but 


232   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

the  forward  striving  to  a  goal,  the  carrying  out  and  actual- 
izing of  eternal  ends,  Lotze's  great  saying,  which  is  the 
gist  of  his  entire  philosophy,  does  justice  to  both  the  scien- 
tific and  the  religious  interest:  ^^How  absolutely  universal 
is  the  extent,  and  at  the  same  time  how  completely  sub- 
ordinate the  significance,  of  the  mission  which  mechanism 
has  to  fulfil  in  the  structure  of  the  world.''''^  The  strict 
legality  and  inviolability  of  connection  are  not  "fatal,"  but 
indispensable. 

It  is  in  reflections  such  as  these  that  one  finds  the  real  and 
fundamental  answer  to  the  question  as  to  the  right  and  free- 
dom of  the  religious  view  of  the  world  in  respect  to  teleology 
in  nature.  Add  to  this  the  insight  into  the  self-dependence 
and  underivability  of  the  spiritual — to  which  much  attention 
must  be  devoted  farther  on — and  one  may  be  excused  from 
endless  warfare  with  naturalistic  doctrines.^ 

Our  examination  of  naturalism  might  terminate  at  this 
point,  did  not  the  afiiliation  of  naturalism  with  evolution, 
which  is  the  methodic  presupposition  of  all  the  sciences 
today,  call  for  special  and  separate  treatment.  We  have  all 
become  familiar  with  the  post-Darwinian  modification  of  the 
theory  of  evolution.^  An  early  criticism  of  natural  selection 
was  to  the  effect  that,  while  it  might  account  for  the  survival 
of  the  fittest,  it  could  not  account  for  the  arrival  of  the  fit- 
test. The  problem  was  to  account  for  the  variations  which 
were  the  necessary  presupposition  of  natural  selection.     Over 

1  Italics  his.  See  Microcaimus,  3d  ed.,  in  2  vols. ;  Vol.  I,  Author's  latroduction, 
p.  xvi. 

2  In  this  connection  one  is  in  a  position  to  appreciate  the  sound  kernel  in  the 
old  miracle-faith.  Its  requirement  of  mystery,  dependence,  and  providence  was  its 
really  religious  feature.  Its  error  was,  as  we  have  abundantly  seen,  first  in  naively 
seeking  these  in  single  exceptional  acts,  arbitrary  acts,  which  had  no  analogy  to  any 
other  occurrence;  and,  secondly,  in  overlooking  or  underestimating  them  as 
"moments"  in  all  nature,  moments  which  must  be  immanent  and  constant  in  all 
nature  according  to  the  religious  view  of  the  world  itself. 

3  The  abandonment  of  specific  features  of  Darwin's  own  doctrine  has  been  igno- 
rantly  and  erroneously  construed  by  some  as  a  collapse  of  evolution  in  general. 


Naturalistic  and  Eeligious  World-Views    233 

twenty  years  ago  Weismann  came  forward  with  a  challenge 
to  scientists  to  prove  that  there  is  inheritance  of  characters 
acquired  by  parents  during  their  lifetime.  Since  then  biolo- 
gists have  been  divided  into  neo-Darwinian  and  neo- 
Lamarckian  camps.  Weismann  sought  to  explain  all  by 
means  of  germinal  selection  and  natural  selection.  This 
reduces  the  problem  largely  to  one  of  heredity  in  general, 
and  this  in  turn  is  seen  to  be  a  special  case  of  the  general 
problem  of  growth.  De  Vries  seems  to  have  discovered  that 
sudden  mutations,  rather  than  insensible  variations,  are  the 
probable  basis  of  new  species.  In  considering  the  permanence 
of  these  new  species,  the  result  of  Mendel's  researches  on 
heredity  must  be  taken  into  consideration.  The  point  of 
present  importance  is  the  spontaneity  of  organism  considered 
in  relation  to  its  environment.  There  are  new  beffinningrs 
which  are  not  accounted  for  by  the  action  of  the  environment 
upon  it.  In  other  words,  there  is,  we  have  good  reasons  to 
think,  in  all  organic  evolution,  a  quantitative  equivalence, 
indeed,  between  "cause"  and  "ejffect,*'  so  far  as  matter  and 
energy  are  concerned,  and  yet  there  is  other  and  there  is 
more  in  the  effect  than  in  the  cause.  There  is  the  quali- 
tatively new.  That  there  is  in  nature  a  principle  of  spon- 
taneity, of  new  begianings,  of  underivability,  as  well  as  a 
principle  of  habit,  of  order,  or  of  mechanical  equivalence, 
is  a  consideration,  as  a  moment's  reflection  will  convince 
the  reader,  which  is  of  decisive  importance  as  presupposi- 
tion of  the  specific  contention  of  this  whole  book.  It  is 
the  emphasis  upon  activity  and  initiative  in  development 
which  constitutes  the  most  significant  advance  upon  origi- 
nal Darwinism.  The  difference  between  the  old  evolution 
and  the  new  is  so  important  that  I  reproduce  a  summary 
statement  thereof,  given  by  the  botanist  Korschinsky  in 
Naturwissenschaftliche  JVochenschrift,  Vol.  XIV,  as  fol- 
lows : 


234   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 


1.  All  that  is  organic  is  capa- 
ble of  change.  Variation  is  due 
partly  to  inner,  partly  to  outer 
causes. 


1.  All  that  is  organic  is  capa- 
ble of  change.  This  capability 
is  a  fundamental,  inner  prop- 
erty of  living  beings  in  general, 
and  independent  of  external 
conditions.  It  is  usually  la- 
tently kept  through  heredita- 
tion.  It  comes  to  expression 
now  and  then  in  sudden  changes. 


2.  Struggle  of  existence. — 
This  gathers,  increases,  fixes  the 
useful  properties,  drops  the  use- 
less. All  the  marks  and  pecu- 
liarities of  a  finished  species  are 
the  results  of  a  long  process  of 
natural  selection.  They  must 
therefore  conform  to  the  outer 
conditions. 


2.  Sudden  changes.  —  Under 
favorable  circumstances,  these 
are  starting-points  of  stable 
races.  The  characteristics  are 
now  and  then  useful,  but  also 
now  and  then  entirely  indi  ff  erent 
to  use  or  injury.  Now  and  then 
they  are  not  in  harmony  with 
outer  relations. 


3.  The  species  is  subject  to 
constant  change — ^is  abidingly 
the  object  of  natural  selection 
and  Steigerung  of  properties. 
New  species  arise  on  this  ac- 
count. 


3.  All  species  once  firmly 
formed  abide,  yet  new  forms  are 
split  off  through  heterogenesis, 
thus  shaking  the  vital  equilib- 
rium. The  new  is  at  first  uncer- 
tain and  fluctuating.  Gradually 
it  becomes  fixed.  Then  new 
forms  and  races  with  gradually 
solidifving  constitution. 


4.  The  sharper  and  more 
strenuous  the  action  of  outer 
conditions  of  existence,  the 
more  violent  the  struggle  of 
existence;  and,  hence,  the  quick- 
er and  siu'er  new  forms  arise. 


4.  Only  under  specially  favor- 
able conditions,  only  when  the 
struggle  of  existence  is  small  or 
does  not  exist,  can  new  forms 
arise  and  become  fixed.  Under 
hard  conditions  no  species  arise. 
If  they  do  arise,  they  perish  im- 
mediately. 


Natuealistic  and  Religious  World-Views    235 


5.  The  main  condition  of  de- 
velopment is  therefore  struggle 
of  existence  and  natural  selec- 
tion. 


6.  If  there  had  been  no  strug- 
gle for  existence,  there  would 
have  been  no  adaptation,  and 
no  improvement. 

7.  Progress  in  nature,  the  im- 
provement of  organism,  is  only  a 
more  complex,  ever  more  perfect 
adaptation  to  external  circum- 
stances. It  is  reached  in  a 
purely  mechanical  way,  through 
accumulation  of  useful  charac- 
teristics. 


NEW 

5.  Struggle  of  existence  only 
decimates  the  otherwise  much 
richer  fulness  of  possible  forms. 
It  hinders  the  sprouting  of  new 
variations  and  is  in  the  way  of 
peculiar  new  formations.  Of 
itself,  it  is  a  hostile,  not  a 
friendly,  factor  to  evolution. 

6.  If  there  had  been  no  strug- 
gle for  existence,  there  would 
have  been  no  destruction  of 
forms  already  risen  or  arising. 

7.  The  adaptation  which  the 
struggle  of  existence  effectuates 
has  nothing  to  do  mth  improve- 
ment; for  the  physiologically 
and  morphologically  higher  or- 
ganisms are  not  always  better 
adapted  to  outer  conditions  than 
the  lower  are.  Evolution  is  not 
exjilicable  mechanically. 
The  origin  of  higher  forms  from 
lower  ispossible  only  on  account 
of  a  tendency  to  progress,  tvhich 
resides  in  the  organism.^ 


The  reader  will  recognize  how  great  and  important  the 
changfe  is  from  the  old  evolution  to  the  new.  And  it  will 
appear  that  the  change  redounds  vastly  to  the  advantage  of 
the  definite  thesis  which  our  essay  seeks  in  the  end  to  estab- 
lish. The  new  school  continues  to  acknowledge  development 
and  descent,  or  derivation.  But  it  sets  aside  Darwinism  as 
an  overcome  hypothesis — a  circumstance  which,  as  already 
indicated,  an  obtuse  orthodox  apologetic  has  seized  upon,  in 

1  Italics  mine  throughout. 


236    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

desperation,  as  tantamount  to  the  scientific  abandonment  of 
the  principle  of  evolution  in  general.  The  new  evolution  is 
more  biological  than  mechanical,  emphasizes  the  dignity  and 
mystery  of  inner  as  against  outer  cause,  and  positively  faces 
the  idea  of  teleology.  It  gives  less  attention  to  factors  of 
accidence  and  foreground,  more  to  the  background  of  things. 
And  the  principle  of  activity  and  spontaneity  which  had  been 
allowed — as  by  grace  at  that — only  to  the  human  in  its 
higher  aspects,  but,  thus  allowed,  could  not  be  defended,  has 
been  extended  as  an  immanent  and  constant  factor  in  all 
reality,  natural  as  well  as  human.  So  only  can  it  be  defended. 
For  this  principle  is  like  the  notion  of  freedom  in  general. 
After  the  world's  high  debate  has  gone  on  for  ages,  we  have 
come  to  understand  at  last  that,  if  man  is  free  at  all,  it  is 
because  freedom  is  the  principle  of  things,  because  it  exists 
everywhere,  because  determinism  itself  is  only  a  product  of 
freedom.  So,  similarly,  this  principle  of  activity  and  of  new 
beginnings,  itself  but  another  way  of  stating  the  problem 
of  freedom,  resides  in  all  reality,  however  great,  however 
small,  or  in  none  at  all — and  the  mechanical  does  not  pro- 
duce the  teleological,  the  passive  the  active,  the  dead  the 
living,  but  vice  versa.  In  all  this,  it  is  evident,  the  religious 
view  of  the  world  has  a  peculiar  interest.  To  this  interest 
w^e  must  now  attend,  in  the  rest  of  this  chapter,  a  little  more 
specifically. 

In  a  lecture  at  Eisenach,  1897,  "Das  Verhaltnis  des 
evangelischen  Glaubens  zur  Logoslehre,"'  Kaftan  raised 
the  question  whether  perhaps  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
might  not  be  able  to  do  for  the  modern  thinker  a  service 
similar  to  that  rendered  by  the  Logos  idea  at  the  beginning 
of  Christian  history — furnish  a  concept  for  the  compre- 
hensive exposition  of  the   Christian  faith.     Does    not,    he 

1 "  The  relation  of  the  evangelical  faith  to  the  Logos  doctrine."  The  lecture, 
which  provoked  violent  protest,  may  be  found  in  Zeitschrift  fiir  Theologieund  Kirche, 
Vol.  Vll. 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    237 

asks,  the  apprehension  of  the  whole  universe  as  a  self- 
developing  history  help  us  to  bring  to  expression  again,  in 
a  manner  intelligible  to  the  modern  man,  the  old  truth  of 
Christianity,  namely,  the  subordination  of  the  entire  cosmic 
and  human  history  to  God's  redemptive  will,  and  the  central 
position  of  Jesus  Christ  as  Lord?  It  is  a  bold  inquiry,  in 
the  face  of  the  fact  that  many  had  supposed  that  the  whole 
opposition  of  the  modern  world  to  Christianity  was  summed 
up  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution — opposition  to  (a)  the  found- 
ing of  Christian  faith  on  an  historical  person  who  could  have 
only  relative  importance  as  a  link  in  the  chain  of  develop- 
ment; (6)  the  exaltation  of  God  over  the  world  which  con- 
tains in  itself  all  the  forces  of  life  and  development;  (c)  the 
Christian  idea  of  freedom  and  guilt,  which  yet  cannot  exist 
in  view  of  the  necessity  of  development;  (d)  the  universal 
validity  of  the  Christian  ideals  of  life,  which  yet  must  be  sur- 
passed in  the  course  of  development;  and  (e)  the  Christian 
hope,  which  must  exchange  its  dream  of  transcendent  and 
future  consummation  for  the  illimitable  perspective  of  a 
temporal  development,  in  which  the  fate  of  the  individual  is 
problematic.  And  yet  Kaftan  would  make  this  foundation 
and  support  of  a  combination  of  anti-Christian  ideas  service- 
able to  the  Christian  view  of  the  world!  Surely,  however, 
self-repression  and  sobriety  should  characterize  our  attitude 
to  the  serious  problem — the  problem  as  to  whether  the  rela- 
tion between  Christianity  and  evolution  can  be  set  forth  in 
accordance  with  the  inalienable  basis  of  the  Christian  faith 
and  the  present  state  of  science. 

Is,  then,  Christianity  hostile  to  evolution?  or.  Can  the 
policy  of  the  former  toward  the  latter  be  laissez  faire?  or,  May 
it  be  friendly  ?  or.  Can  Christianity  appropriate  and  embody 
evolution  in  a  Christian  view  of  the  world  ?  In  a  discussion 
of  naturalism,  we  are  concerned  with  these  problems  in  the 
aspect  which  they  wear,  first  of  all,  for  the  region  of  nature. 


238    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

In  traditional  apologetics  it  was  assumed  that  the  Chris- 
tian view  of  God  as  Creator  and  Lord  of  the  world  was  excluded 
by  the  theory  of  evolution.  The  polemic  that  was  carried  on 
in  a  former  generation  recalls  to  our  minds  today  the  analo- 
gous polemic  against  Copernicanism  which  contemporaneous 
reformers  and  theologians,  Luther  and  Melancthon  among 
them,  declared  should  be  suppressed  as  subversive  of  the 
Christian  faith — suppressed  by  the  strong  arm  of  the  law,  if 
milder  measures  did  not  suffice.  This  old  example  should 
ever  warn  us  to  deliberate  most  judicially  concerning  the 
possibility  and  limits  of  our  faith — and  to  do  so  not  as  a 
matter  of  fear,  but  as  an  expression  of  confidence  and  as  the 
part  of  wisdom.  The  unjust  seizure  of  territory  that  does 
not  belong  to  a  kingdom  jeopardizes  the  ancient  and  inalien- 
able possessions  that  do.  A  kindlier  judgment  than  is  usual 
might  be  passed  upon  the  theological  warfare  of  the  past,  did 
the  sons  of  a  less  belligerent,  but  mayhap  also  less  loyal,  time 
learn  therefrom  the  duty  of  discriminating  the  peculiar  char- 
acter of  the  Christian  view  of  the  world,  and  the  content  of 
the  Christian  faith  that  God  "created  the  world."  We  have 
already  expressed  the  necessary  idea  that  accrues  to  this 
faith.  It  is  that  the  matter,  force,  and  laws  of  the  world,  in 
every  mode  of  existence  and  behavior,  are  only  substratum 
and  means  for  the  actualization  of  God's  eternal  purposes, 
and  have  their  raison  cVetrc  in  those  purposes.  Thus  "crea- 
tion" ceases  to  be  conceived  as  instantaneous  and  finished  as 
a  single  event,  and  comes  to  be  apprehended  as  a  constant 
active  relation  of  God  to  the  world,  who  made,  and  makes,  and 
forever  makes  anew  all  things.'     From  this  now  familiar  line 

1  It  has  always  been  assumed  that  only  the  principle  of  stability,  never  that  of 
development,  is  applicable  to  the  "divine  plan"  in  and  of  itself.  As  theologians  speak 
of  "the  divine  foreknowledge  of  future  contingencies  of  free  agents,"  su  they  also 
speak  of  the  "divine  plan"  as  something  finished  and  ready-made  "from  the  begin- 
ning"— remindingone  of  aclock  wound  up  "in  the  beginning,"  with  nothingtodobut 
to  run  down  in  time.  This  is  a  part  of  that  scholastic-dogmatic  survival  which  sets 
forth  the  unchangeability  of  Deity  as  opposition  to  the  changeability  of  the  "world." 
But  an  absolutely  unchangeable  ground  of  continuous  change  is  unthinkable.     If 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    23'9 

of  thought,  the  Christian  faith  in  creation  keeps  its  worth,  but 
loses  its  offense  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  The  change  is 
due,  in  part,  to  faith  learning  to  keep  to  its  own  limits.  The 
world  has  its  sole  sufficient  ground  in  the  will  and  reason  of 
God — this  is  the  conviction  which  faith  cannot  surrender. 
It  is  not  this  conviction,  but  the  deistic  externality  and  con- 
tingency of  the  ecclesiastical  dogma  of  creation,  which  clash 
with  evolution.  The  mode  of  the  efficient  relation  of  God  to 
the  world  belongs  in  the  region  of  the  unknowable;  the  mode 
of  the  relation  between  events  in  the  world,  how  they  are 
caused  in  particular,  belongs  to  the  region  of  empirical 
inquiry;  neither  is  object  of  faith.  And  if  it  be  true  that 
evolutionary  philosophy  must  support  the  general  thought 
of  the  beginningless  and  endless  operation  of  Omnipotence 
and  Wisdom,  such  an  idea  will  be  entirely  satisfactory  to  reli- 
gious faith,  which  is  as  little  concerned  with  tohen  the  world 
was  made  as  with  how — stipulating  only  that  it  be  a  revela- 
tion of  the  purpose  and  glory  of  the  Eternal  Goodness. 

But  something  more  is  required  than  to  exhibit  the  neces- 

eternity  be  not  duration  antecedent  to,  or  subsequent  to,  or  dualistically  concurrent 
with,  time,  but  rather  the  content  of  time;  and  if  God  be  not  static,  but  dynamic,  not 
"being,"  but  '"becoming" — and  this  seems  to  be  the  more  intelligible  supposition,  if 
the  human  indeed  somehow  belongs  to  the  divine ;  for,  in  that  case,  the  human  cannot 
be  characterized  by  "becoming,"  while  the  divine  is  'not— it  follows  that  his  "plan," 
"bone  of  his  bone,  flesh  of  his  flesh,"  so  to  speak,  would  be  a  growing  plan,  even  as 
our  life-plans  grow  and  change  with  the  growth  and  change  of  our  "situations."  The 
idea  that  God  does  all  his  planning  and  decreeing  in  a  past  "eternity"  and  his  execu- 
tion in  time  would  seem  to  be  a  needless  dualism  with  reference  to  Him  who,  if  he  be 
immanent  at  all,  is  immanent  in  his  thought  as  in  his  action.  Christian  faith  is  the 
conviction  that  there  is  plan  and  meaning  in  things.  It  does  not  require  divorce  and 
distance  between  plan  and  thing,  meaning  of  fact  and  the  fact  itself — chronological 
priority  of  the  former  to  the  latter.  And  in  the  same  problem,  stated  in  terms  of 
mechanism  and  teleology,  if  it  should  turn  out — I  do  not  say  that  it  will  do  so — that 
the  purpose  is  so  intricate  and  manifold,  yet  so  unitary,  orderly,  and  habitual,  as  to 
be  mechanical,  and  the  mechanism  so  complex  and  adaptive,  so  delicately  and  sensi- 
tively constructed  and  adjusted,  as  to  be  purposive,  the  needs  of  faith  would  still  be 
met.  The  new  dualism  between  mechanism  and  teleology  may  be  no  better  than  the 
old  deistic  dualism  set  forth  in  the  famous  illustration  of  the  watchmaker  and  the 
watch.  If  God  be  a  living  God,  his  thought  must  be  living  too,  and  it  may  be  that 
the  separation  between  purpose  and  fulfilment  of  purpose  should,  in  the  interest  of 
our  conception  of  the  divine  spontaneity  and  interest,  cease  from  our  theology.  A 
static  purpose  and  omniscience,  A=A=A=A,  forever,  is  a  formula  of  death  and  not 
of  life. 


240   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

sary  character,  content,  and  limits  of  our  faith.  If  a  modus 
Vivendi  with  science  is  to  be  struck,  we  must  indicate  the 
conditions  under  which  alone  the  theory  of  evolution  is  com- 
patible with  Christian  faith.  That  condition  is,  not  simply 
that  the  conception  of  evolution  shall  allow,  but  shall  fit  into, 
the  teleological  system  to  which  faith  is  committed.  The 
attempt  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  vegetable  and  animal  king- 
doms, without  an  ideal  principle,  as  the  endless  summation  of 
endless  variations  and  gradual  changes  by  means  of  adapta- 
tion to  the  conditions  of  existence,  selectioii  through  the 
struggle  of  existence,  and  the  hereditation  of  acquired  prop- 
erties, threatens  to  replace  the  Christian  conviction  in  ques- 
tion by  the  causality  of  blind  material  mechanism.  We  have 
already  seen  the  dissatisfaction  of  science  with  this  form  of 
the  evolutionary  doctrine,  and  the  great  change  that  has 
taken  place.     But  we  must  now  take  up  the  matter  again. 

But  does  not  evolution  in  modern  natural  science  include 
teleology  ?  Not  in  the  full,  true,  sense  of  the  word.  It  is  an 
illusion  to  suppose  that  it  does.  There  is,  indeed,  in  science 
the  thought  of  a  goal  of  development,  of  progress  toward 
that  goal,  and  some  appreciation  of  it  as  loorthfid.  Purpose- 
fulness  in  organisms  received  most  comprehensive  application 
in  Darwin's  own  views.  But,  in  spite  of  all  this,  the  theory 
of  development  as  held  by  natural  science  has  not  yet 
advanced  to  a  teleological  view  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word. 
To  say  that  the  goal  of  evolution  is  more  and  more  "perfect" 
forms  of  organism  and  kinds  of  life,  and  that  this  goal  is  due 
to  an  efficient  cause,  is  not  tantamount  to  saying  that  the 
efficient  cause  ordered  all  on  account  of,  or  with  a  view  to, 
this  goal;  that  therefore  this  goal  has  the  character  of  an  end 
in  view  of  which  the  efficient  cause  proceeded  with  its  arrange- 
ments. Natural  science  can  leave  this  question  open,  but 
it  does  not  always  do  so;  when  it  does  not,  it  becomes 
naturalism. 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    241 

To  be  sure,  natural  science  can  limit  itself  to  its  explana- 
tory work,  and  be  within  its  rights.  But  then  it  must  admit 
that  beyond  its  limits  questions  arise  which  it  may  be  power- 
less either  to  hush  or  to  answer.  It  may  ascertain  more  and 
more  completely  all  the  factors  of  development  that  conspire 
to  a  definite  goal ;  but  the  decisive  question  for  our  view  of  the 
world  still  remains:  Is  this  order  of  the  factors  of  develop- 
ment simply  given  as  fact  in  the  system  of  the  whole,  or  is 
it  a  rational  plan?  This  question  can  be  answered  only  by 
a  valuation  of  the  world.  And  such  valuation  of  the  world 
and  its  goal  is  expressed  in  the  Christian  creation-faith, 
objectionable  as  the  form  of  that  faith  may  be,  on  account  of 
which  the  Schleiermacher  idea  of  dependence  may  be  pre- 
ferred, as  already  indicated.  A  rational  power  is  assured  as 
the  ground  of  the  entire  system  and  its  order,  since  the  final 
end  is  the  kingdom  of  God.  Hence,  if  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion is  to  be  at  peace  with  Christian  faith,  it  must  allow  the 
Christian  answer  to  a  question  which  it  itself  cannot  answer: 
That  development  is  not  merely  a  legally  necessary  brutal 
fact,  but,  causally  conditioned  as  it  is,  is  at  the  same  time  the 
actualization  of  a  divine  end;  an  end,  moreover,  which, 
whether  transcendent  or  immanent,  antecedent  or  contempo- 
raneous, stable  or  becoming,  is  ever  regulative  of  the  whole 
causal  order.  Evolution  is  the  progressive  unfolding  of  a 
rational  thought.  Empirical  science  is  not  as  such  competent 
to  deny  this,  idealistic  philosophy  supports  it,  and  Christian 
faith  requires  it. 

But  is  there  more  than  armed  neutrality  or  mere  compati- 
bility between  the  concept  of  development  and  Christian 
faith  ?  Is  there  a  solidaric  union  between  the  two  ?  Cer- 
tainly one  side  of  the  modern  thought  of  development,  the 
teleological  or  idealistic,  may  be.  We  could  not  well  express 
otherwise  the  articulate  inclusion  of  the  natural  world  in 
our  Christian  faith  in  God.     The   conviction   that  all  the 


242    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

regions,  and  stages,  and  forms  of  the  world  of  nature  are  not 
a  sport  of  the  divine  fancy  or  caprice,  but  a  work  of  His  crea- 
tive hand,  involves  the  idea  that  they  are  the  actualization  of 
a  plan,  therefore  the  development  of  a  divine  thought.  This 
view  is  in  accord  with  the  simple  words  of  the  Mountain 
Sermon :  the  lilies  of  the  field,  the  birds  of  the  air,  and  men, 
are  members  of  the  household  of  God — each  with  its  share 
of  life,  each  with  its  special  vocation,  each  the  actualization 
of  a  divine  thought,  each  a  stage  in  the  development  of  the 
divine  plan  of  the  world.  Thus  formally,  at  all  events,  there 
is  some  solidarity  between  evolution  and  the  Christian  view 
of  the  world.  But  it  is  not  so  clear  that  there  is  no  deviation 
as  to  content.  According  to  Christian  conviction,  the  self- 
developing  plan  of  God  first  becomes  clear  in  a  kingdom  of 
personal  spirits,  destined  to  communion  with  God,  condi- 
tioned by  filial  obedience  and  by  participation  in  his  perfec- 
tion. Compared  with  this  absolute  end  of  God,  the  whole 
natural  world  has  only  relative  worth — means  for  the  outer 
preservation  of  man,  material  for  his  elaborating  activity, 
his  sympathetic  understanding,  his  aesthetic  enjoyment,  his 
scientific  investigation,  and  his  moral  and  religious  culture. 
And  within  the  kingdom  of  God  Christian  faith  assigns  to 
each  individual  child  of  God  absolute  worth  and  eternal 
vocation.  It  is  the  merit  of  Kant  and  of  Ritschl  to  have 
accentuated  the  absoluteness  of  the  moral  end  and  the  worth 
of  personality  over  against  the  whole  natural  world.  But  in 
doing  so  they  have  needlessly  opposed  the  moral  man  and 
his  God,  in  transcendent  and  isolated  loneliness,  to  the  entire 
world  of  nature.  It  is  a  question  whether  either  Kant  or 
Ritschl  could  have  consistently  had  disingenuous  joy  in 
nature.  Certainly  no  adequate  appreciation  was  given  to 
the  worth  of  the  natural,  to  man's  organic  unity  with  the 
natural,  in  order  to  man's  moral  growth  and  maturity. 

But  it  is  our  purpose  to  do  no  more  at  this  time  than 


Naturalistic  and  Keligious  World-Views    243 

to  indicate  that  there  are  points  of  connection  between 
Christian  faith  and  the  teleological  or  idealistic  concept  of 
development  as  regards  nature.  We  may  calmly  give  carte 
blanche  to  the  theory  of  evolution  as  it  affirms  stages  and 
series  of  development,  and  empirically  exhibits  factors  and 
laws  of  the  process.  Such  questions  cannot  be  decided  by 
faith,  but  only  by  science.  Faith  may  not  commit  itself  to  a 
theory,  since  so  much  is  still  uncertain  to  science.  As  we 
have  seen,  former  hypotheses  are  passing  through  a  crisis. 
Much  as  the  crises  are  favorable  to  faith,  they  show  that  a 
direct  union  of  Christian  faith  with  such  theories  is  neither 
permissible  nor  desirable.  But,  in  this  region,  faith — how 
long  it  has  taken  to  learn  the  lesson! — must  give  science  a 
free  hand.  It  is  only  when  we  respect  the  freedom  of  natu- 
ral science  that  we  have  a  right  as  theologians  to  point  out 
the  dogmatism  of  combining  with  the  discovery  of  the  natu- 
ral factors  and  laws  of  development  the  negation  of  the 
teleological  question  with  reference  to  a  purposive  ordering 
spiritual  Power. 

What  attitude  must  Christian  faith  assume  to  the  hypothe- 
sis of  the  animal  derivation  of  man?  It  is  significant 
that  interest  in  this  question  has  waned.  The  antireligious 
conclusions,  the  crude  derision  of  Christianity,  of  a  former 
generation  have  yielded  to  scientific  sobriety  and  reserve.  The 
pathetic  and  fruitless  protest  of  Christian  apologists  has  like- 
wise given  place  to  the  confidence  that  the  dignity  of  man ' 
survives  the  dissolution  of  the  old  conception  of  the  mode  of 
his  origin,  and  to  the  calm  recognition  of  the  freedom  of 
science  to  adduce  reasons  in  support  of  the  new  hypothesis. 
Religiously  worded,  it  is  the  conviction  that  "man  was  cre- 
ated in  the  image  of  God"  that  seems  to  be  excluded  by  the 

1  As  an  aside,  it  may  not  be  entirely  amiss  to  remark  that  any  serious  attention 
to  the  reduction  of  the  dignity  of  man  by  exalting  the  dignity  of  animals  on  account 
of  the  curious  intelligence  they  exhibit  at  the  hands  of  expert  trainers  may  be  post- 
poned until  said  animals  organize  societies  to  train  other  animals,  or  perpetuate  their 
acquired  skill  by  heredity,  or  set  about  teaching  men  to  do  tricks  also  I 


244   The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion. 

idea  of  his  derivation  from  animal  antecedents.  The  inalien- 
able constituents  in  the  Christian  faith  that  man  is  created  in 
the  image  of  God  are,  first,  the  belief  in  the  eternal  divine  des- 
tiny and  vocation  of  man,  and,  secondly,  a  God-given  endow- 
ment adequate  to  this  destiny  and  vocation.  Over  against  all 
materialism,  gnostic  dualism,  and  mechanical  monism,  it  is 
the  merit  of  ecclesiastical  Christianity  to  have  taught  that 
man,  the  individual  and  the  race,  is  thus  the  earthly  image 
of  God.  Its  error  has  been  in  its  stubborn  adhesion  to  the 
supposedly  indissoluble  connection  between  this  faith  and  the 
theory  of  the  naive,  pre-scientific  consciousness  concerning 
the  mode  of  the  origin  of  the  race.  As  regards  the  individual 
man  today,  there  is  no  necessary  opposition  between  his  divine 
origin  and  the  natural  mediation  of  that  origin.  So,  similarly, 
for  the  race  as  a  whole,  origin  from  the  divine  "creative" 
activity  forms  no  exclusive  opposition  to  natural  mediation 
here  also;  and  the  kernel  of  truth  in  the  old  ecclesiastical 
view  of  man  can  coexist  with  scientific  investigation  as  to  the 
original  priority  of  the  natural  and  the  animal,  with  which 
the  human  is  continuous.  Granting  that  man  sprang  from 
nature,  he  is  not  a  nature-being,  but  is  filled  with,  a  personal, 
supramundane  life  in  which  a  higher  thought  is  actualized. 
Granting,  further,  that  he  descended  from  the  animals, 
according  to  a  scientific  theory  of  descent,  yet  entirely  new 
forces  have  come  into  play  in  him  as  man — spiritual  forces, 
which  are  the  prerequisite  of  the  fulfilment  of  his  eternal 
destiny  and  vocation.  Moreover,  according  to  the  philo- 
sophical doctrine  of  the  divine  immanence,  which  declares 
that  God  is  the  cause  in  all  causes,  the  reference  of  man  to 
natural  causation  does  not  exclude  the  notion  of  his  divine 
origin.  And  if  it  be  pointed  out  that  such  reference  does 
not  authenticate  the  singular  dignity  which  religion  accords 
to  man,  it  must  be  urged,  first,  that  it  does  not  exclude  that 
dignity,  and,  secondly,  that,  here  as  everywhere,  we  have 


Natuealistio  and  Religious  Wobld-Views    245 

abandoned  the  idea  of  determining  the  worth  of  reality  by 
an  appeal  to  the  empirical  processes  of  its  origination.  Man 
is  what  he  is,  and  not  what  he  came  from.  As  in  a 
former  connection  we  saw  that  the  worth  of  the  Bible  is 
not  to  be  determined  by  the  mode  of  its  origin,  but  by  its 
fruits,  thus  undermining  the  significance  of  miraculous 
supernaturalism,  so  in  this  connection  the  analogous  con- 
sideration may  be  urged  against  evolutionistic  naturalism, 
that  man's  worth  is  not  dependent  upon  the  way  he  came  to 
be,  but  upon  what  he  is  and  does.  Common  to  naturalism 
and  supernaturalism,  which  are  akin  in  so  many  ways,  is  the 
error  that  a  "tree  is  known  by  its  roots  instead  of  by  its 
fruits."  Bible  or  man,  we  can  never  exhaustively  expose  the 
causal  operations  which  have  originated  them.  We  are  not 
shut  up  to  such  inaccessible  and  problematic  criteria  of  their 
worth.  Besides,  there  would  be  no  character  to  the  "image 
of  God"  in  man,  were  it  man's  by  omnipotent  fiat,  Man's 
worth  is  not  a  gift  merely,  it  is  a  task;  not  a  possession,  but 
a  problem;  and  so  not  a  dower  to  be  received  from  direct 
divine  efficiency  simply,  but  personal  values  to  be  created  by 
one's  own  self-activity  also  in  the  face  of  moral  temptation 
and  of  pain.  Finally,  in  this  remark  we  are  reminded  that 
the  principle  of  activity  or  spontaneity,  of  new  beginnings 
and  underivability,  discussed  already,  and  to  be  considered 
yet  again,  makes  room  for  something  better  than  the  natural- 
istic valuation  of  man  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  theory 
of  descent. 

Brief  mention  should  be  made  of  the  bearing  of  evolution 
upon  the  question  of  human  sin.  At  first  sight,  it  might 
appear  that  materialism  threw  light  upon  this  dark  problem. 
Does  not  the  theory  of  descent  validate  the  power  of  sin  and 
the  truth  of  the  church's  doctrine  of  original  or  hereditary 
sin?  Does  it  not  show  that  the  "beast  in  man"  is  to  be 
found  in  all  of  us  as  a  heritage  that  cannot  be  escaped  or 


246   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

cast  aside?  And  does  it  not  explain  specially  pronounced 
atavistic  retrogressions  or  diversions  in  certain  cases?  Is 
not  sin  vestigia?  We  do  not  think  so.  It  is  not  denied 
that  there  is  a  grain  of  truth  in  these  considerations.  They 
point  to  some  of  the  conditions  of  the  possibility  of  sin.  But 
with  all  these  considerations — and  this  is  the  important 
matter — the  concept  of  sin  is  not  yet  reached.  The  passive 
derivation  of  "sin"  on  the  part  of  naturalism,  like  the  passive 
derivation  of  man  in  general,  amounts  to  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  That  which  makes  sin  sin,  as  that  which  makes  man 
man,  is  precisely  the  "moment"  of  activity  and  underivability 
in  the  case  of  each.  Man's  animal  heritage  as  animal,  of 
desire,  impulse,  passion,  no  matter  how  malignant  they 
might  be,  is  not  properly  sin;  it  is  only  when  the  personal 
decision  of  man,  and  therewith  his  freedom — that  is,  this 
factor  of  spontaneity,  of  which  the  naturalistic  conception  of 
evolution  takes  no  note — comes  into  play  over  against  this 
heritage,  that  the  outcome  can  be  properly  designated  sin. 
This  heritage  assumes  the  character  of  sin  only  in  the  degree 
that  it,  though  naturally  given,  is  aiffirmed,  and  thereby 
strengthened,  through  free  decision  of  the  will  in  opposition 
to  conscience.  In  a  word,  not  denying  the  principle  of 
natural  causation  or  determinism,  and  its  bearing  upon  the 
problem,  it  is  the  principle  of  freedom,  of  which  naturalism 
takes  no  proper  account,  that  furnishes  the  specific  basis  of 
sin. 

But,  in  saying  this,  we  have  already  passed  beyond  the 
application  of  evolution  to  nature  and  anticipated  its  appli- 
cation to  history,  especially  to  the  religious  and  moral  life  of 
man.  What  is  the  difference  between  the  religious  and  the 
naturalistic  view  of  history?  This  question  received  brief 
historic  treatment  in  the  preceding  chapter,  in  signalizing 
the  change  from  the  old  views  to  the  new.  According  to  the 
old  view,   history  lies  in  a  short  span  of  time  between  two 


Natuealistic  and  Keligious  Wokld-Views    247 

fixed  points.  It  is  the  enactment  of  a  mighty  drama.  Its 
main  content  is  the  relation  between  God  and  man.  Good 
and  evil  are  so  sharply  opposed  that  there  is  nothing  of 
either  in  the  other — they  are  like  oil  and  water.  Man  is 
called  upon  to  make  a  great  decision.  Events  do  not  occur 
of  themselves.  Their  occurring  is  due  to  the  supernatural 
wisdom,  power,  and  goodness  of  God.  He  guides  history  to 
fixed  goals.  He  sends  great  personalities  as  servants  of  his 
will.  Creation  and  fall,  redemption  and  judgment — these 
are  the  sublime  and  awful  facts  of  the  drama,  which  ends, 
after  tumultuous  struggle  between  the  powers  of  darkness 
and  light,  in  a  definite  victory  for  the  good.  All  outside 
reality  and  phenomena  are  only  stage-settings  for  the  drama. 
The  acts  on  which  the  fate  of  the  world  hangs  have  already 
taken  place.  We  have  nothing  new  to  offer,  but  only  to 
appropriate  and  retain  what  has  already  been  done.  Tradition 
gives  the  truth ;  reason  retires  to  the  background.  The  eter- 
nal is  in  tradition,  not  in  reason.  But  the  eternal  ivas  in 
tradition ;  truth  was  certain,  fixed,  absolute ;  so  were  goodness 
and  duty ;  so  was  destiny. 

But  all  this  has  changed.  Endless  becoming,  in  which 
human  history  is  briefest  span ;  the  slow  ascent  of  the  human 
from  animal  beginnings,  instead  of  the  status  integritatis; 
struggle  of  existence  red  in  tooth  and  claw,  instead  of  super- 
natural wisdom  and  goodness;  strict  causal  concatenation, 
instead  of  a  Pilot  whom  we  may  hope  to  meet  face  to  face; 
natural  process  instead  of  freedom  and  conduct;  history  an 
object  of  causal  explanation  for  the  naturalist,  instead  of  an 
object  of  moral  sublimity  for  the  prophet  and  the  seer;  milieu, 
instead  of  normative  and  dynamic  greatness  of  unique  person- 
alities; the  relativity  and  unreliability  of  tradition,  instead 
of  its  absoluteness  and  trustworthiness;  criticism  instead  of 
authority ;  the  present  judging  the  past,  instead  of  the  past  the 
present;  an  erring,  sinning  generation,  seeking  after  truth 


248    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

and  duty  and  right,  lost  from  the  right  way,  like  Dante  in 
the  wilderness,  instead  of  the  old  magic  of  eternal  inviolable 
truths  and  norms;  only  the  temporal  and  no  eternal  at  all  — 
such,  interminably,  is  the  bitter,  cruel  story  of  disillusion- 
ment and  despair  that  the  naturalistic  view  of  history  has  to 
tell  the  bearer  of  the  "old  faith"  in  God  and  freedom  and 
immortality.  Yes,  like  Dante — it  is  the  experience  of  our 
generation — we  are  such  as  have  lost  our  way  and  wander 
in  the  thicket,  full  of  anxiety  and  agony.  It  is  bad  when 
men  do  not  know  what  to  believe ;  it  is  perhaps  even  worse 
when  they  do  not  know  what  they  ought  to  do,  and  what 
they  may  dare  to  hope.  But  this  is  precisely  our  situation. 
Upon  the  corrosion  of  the  metaphysics  of  Christianity  is 
following  the  corrosion  of  the  ethics  of  Christianity.  Upon 
the  religious  crisis  follows  the  moral.  It  is  only  misguided 
superficiality  to  suppose  that  the  fate  of  the  moral  can  be 
lastingly  separated  from  that  of  the  religious.  The  hope  of 
some  lovers  of  our  kind,  that  Christian  morals  may  abide  in 
the  modern  consciousness  after  the  Christian  faith  in  God 
has  perished  there,  is  as  pathetic  as  it  is  sincere.  The  phrase 
"practical  Christianity"  epitomizes  the  story  of  a  lost  faith. 
Then  came,  as  a  last  impulse  out  of  the  same  root,  the 
endeavors  of  the  Society  of  Ethical  Culture  to  be  oblivious 
to  the  raging  Kampf  urn  die  Weltanschauung,  and  to  found 
a  church  of  morality-religion,  instead  of  the  old  redemption- 
religion,  on  the  basis  of  morality — a  church  that  should  be 
a  meeting-place  for  all  the  spirits  that  had  been  divided  by 
the  losing  struggle  for  faith.  This,  too,  is  illusion.  The 
billows  of  that  struggle  for  faith  soon  reached  the  land  of 
morality.  Schopenhauer  began  long  ago  to  write  about  the 
world-negating  character  of  Christianity.  Then  began  a 
partition  between  the  essential  and  the  unessential,  the  literal 
and  the  figurative.  Mountain  Sermon  of  Jesus.  Historical 
theology  in  its  recent  phase  joins  in,  and  the  eschatological 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    249 

school  has  shown  that  the  entire  ethics  of  Jesus  is  conditioned 
by  his  expectation  of  the  speedy  end  of  the  world  and  the 
day  of  judgment.  Thus  colored,  his  moral  precepts  are  pro- 
visional, and  not  norms  for  all  time.  But  the  world  did  not 
end,  and  Christianity  had  to  conclude  a  compromise  with  it. 
A  morality  of  the  world  was  coupled  with  a  morality  that 
negated  the  world,  and  the  product  was  "Christian  morality." 
Ever  and  anon  bearers  of  the  old  ai'enuine  world-neofatinsr 
heroic  Christianity  rebelled  against  this  hybrid;  but  the 
modern  man  has  drawn  the  opposite  conclusion,  that  for  us 
who  are  looking  upon  the  world  with  different  eyes  the 
eschatological  ethics  of  Jesus  and  of  primitive  Christianity 
no  longer  have  validity.  Finally,  socialistic  development 
set  in,  with  its  demand  that  Christianity  should  settle  the 
social  question.  An  effort  was  made  to  derive  a  social  pro- 
gram from  the  Bible.  The  effort  was  impracticable.  It  was 
abandoned  in  favor  of  the  idea  that  the  gospel  furnished 
the  spirit,  the  ultimate  principles  for  an  order  of  economic 
things.  But  no  sooner  had  the  new  enthusiasm  kindled  than 
the  hour  struck  for  the  knowledge  that  the  historical  Jesus  was 
much  farther  from  us  and  much  stranger  to  us  than  we  had 
believed,  and  that  we  could  not  count  upon  him  off-hand  to 
play  a  leading  part  in  our  social  program.  Jesus'  ethic  of 
pity  and  purity,  of  inner  disposition  and  personality,  was  not 
quite  to  the  liking  of  the  socialists,  who  required  an  ethic  of 
worldly  conflict,  of  class-war,  and  of  world-politics.  His  is 
good;  but  we  need  the  other:  hence  the  problem  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  Christianity  in  the  modern  world.  The  solution, 
so  it  is  declared,  is:  From  dogmatics  to  ethics.  It  began 
long  ago  when  the  Reformation,  which  lived  in  religion,  was 
succeeded  by  Pietism  and  Rationalism,  with  their  facing 
toward  morality.  The  last  century  took  up  this  development 
again.  At  present  Ritschlianism  is  ethically  oriented  through 
and  through.    But  2)0,1' i passu  with  this  development  religious 


250   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

doubt  has  grown.  As  we  have  seen,  first  verbal  inspiration 
passed  away,  then  the  christological  dogma,  then  tlie  tradi- 
tional portrait  of  the  gospels.  But,  for  a  time,  as  already 
said,  the  ethics  of  the  gospels  remained  intact.  The  summit 
of  the  Mountain  Sermon  reached  to  heaven — but  the  waves 
of  doubt  climbed  higher  and  higher  until  they  overflowed  it. 
This  was  the  way  of  doubt. 

This  crisis  of  the  Christian  morality  was  accompanied  by 
the  naturalistic  crisis  in  morality  in  general — by  naturalistic 
monism.  Its  tendency  is  to  rob  the  moral  life  of  its  self- 
dependence  and  to  make  it,  along  with  the  spiritual  life  in 
general,  a  product,  and  a  homogeneous  constituent,  of  the 
great  mechanism  of  nature.  Often  enough  have  we  remarked 
that,  according  to  the  old  apprehension,  moral  truth  was 
something  fixed  and  unchangeable,  the  resting  pole  in  the 
flight  of  phenomena;  in  the  midst  of  the  relativities  of  earth, 
an  unconditioned  and  eternal.  So  thought  orthodoxy,  and 
rationalism  too,  and,  for  the  matter  of  that,  the  idealistic 
philosophy,  still  mindful  of  him  of  "the  categorical  impera- 
tive." The  eternal  law  in  every  human  soul — a  lawbook 
with  imperishable  letters — making  the  same  requirement, 
speaking  to  a  child  of  the  twentieth  century  precisely  as  it 
spoke  ages  ago  to  the  wild  savage — that  was  the  idea.  The 
savage  had  no  other  conscience  than  Kant  or  Carlyle.  Con- 
science will  speak  no  other  language  in  future  millenniums 
than  in  the  days  of  "the  feathered  folk  and  wild"  of  prim- 
eval forests;  the  only  difference  will  be  that  this  language 
will  be  better  understood.  Here  is  a  rock  on  which  the 
heart  can  rest  in  the  sea  of  error:    Morality  is  absolute. 

Then  came  the  doctrine  of  evolution — Hegel  first,  then 
Darwin — and  said:  Morality  is  relative.  It  is  not  fixed,  but 
fluid.  It  has  become,  and  will  become.  What  we  call 
"innate"  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  are  not  "innate"  in  the 
sense  that  we  thought;  they  grew  too,  and  are  witnesses. 


Naturalistic  and  Keligious  World-Views    251 

not  to  God,  but  to  custom.  This  doctrine  of  evolution  is  at 
bottom  only  a  part  of  the  historicism  peculiar  to  the  last 
century,  whose  characteristic  is  the  passionate  curiosity  to 
know  hoiv  things  become. 

This,  then,  is  the  picture  of  the  moral  becoming  of  man 
discovered  by  the  new  doctrine.  Primitive  man  was  morally 
on  the  same  plane  with  the  beasts ;  two  great  educators  took 
him  in  hand,  "hunger  and  love,"  in  Schiller's  phrase.  Bit- 
ter necessity  forced  him  to  form  certain  rules  to  govern  his 
relations.  Experience  gradually  taught  him  which  of  them 
are  requisite  to  his  welfare.  But  he  was  not  alone,  but  in 
families,  tribes,  folk;  and  so  he  had  to  get  on  with  others, 
and  had  to  form  rules  for  this  collective  life.  Individual 
morality  was  supplemented  by  social  morality.  Therefore 
morality  was  originally  custom.  In  the  course  of  time  it 
came  to  be  second  nature;  religion  and  law  sanctioned  it;  it 
solidified  into  conscience  in  individuals — conscience  being 
the  ticker  in  consciousness  which  announced  whether  one 
was  in  agreement  or  disagreement  with  traditional  habits. 
But  the  development  remains  in  a  state  of  flux.  As  the  con- 
science of  the  civilized  man  today  is  different  from  that  of 
the  savage  of  long  ago,  so  the  conscience  of  future  genera- 
tions will  be  different  from  ours.  In  short,  the  moral  world 
is  not  finished  from  the  start,  but  has  become,  and  remains  in 
a  state  of  becoming. 

Naturalism  draws  the  conclusions  from  the  history  of  the 
evolution  of  morality.  From  being  a  divine  law,  morality 
thus  comes  to  be  a  product  of  man ;  from  being  an  absolute 
obligation,  it  comes  to  be  a  relative.  Man,  the  empirical 
man,  is  the  measure  of  all  things.  The  moral  law  is  no 
longer  master,  but  servant.  Nothing  is  fixed.  Conscience 
is  no  longer  a  temple  in  which  the  voice  of  Deity  is  heard, 
but  a  museum  in  which  are  stacked  up  the  memories  of  the 
past.     The  moral  world  loses  its  supramundane  majesty,  man 


252    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

his  special  position;  nature  sucks  him  back  completely  into 
itself;  the  waves  of  monism  settle  over  him. 

Naturalism  stands  for  milieu  also,  Man  is  the  product 
of  his  environment,  of  his  relations.  We  are  on  the  alert 
for  connections,  for  the  natural  basis  of  the  spiritual  life,  for 
the  law  of  heredity.  When  we  seek  to  know  about  a  man, 
we  do  not  ask  who  he  is,  but  whence  he  came.  To  the  quest 
for  natural  basis  we  add  the  social.  We  are  a  product  of 
economic  relations.  The  moral  man  becomes  a  summation 
of  many  external  influences — the  Vhomme  machine  of 
Lamettrie.  Milieu  becomes  the  moving  factor  of  history. 
Ideas  do  not  count  for  much  —  they  are  only  the  product  of 
definite  economic  collisions;  nor  do  great  men — they  are 
only  foci  of  the  forces  which  move  the  times.  Hero-worship 
is  unhistorical.  Even  art  and  science  are  only  the  foam 
which  the  social  waves  generate.  In  short,  the  awe-inspiring 
drama  of  the  old  faith  is  gone.  From  being  an  epic  or 
a  tragedy,  history  is  transformed  into  a  puppet  show  in  which 
men  are  only  puppets  which  the  great  nature-mechanism 
sets  in  motion.  Not  morals,  but  life,  passion,  power,  is  the 
watchword.  And  while,  on  the  summit  of  naturalistic  art 
and  philosophy,  immoralism  is  singing  its  wild  hymn,  Jen- 
seits  von  Gut  und  Bose,  a  broad,  filthy  stream  of  practical 
immorality,  in  the  shape  of  alcoholism,  of  incontinence,  of 
moral  materialism,  not  beyond  good  and  evil,  rolls  steadily  on. 

But  it  is  time  to  revert  to  the  more  direct  course  of  the 
discussion  concerning  the  rise  and  relations  of  naturalism. 

Conflict,  compromise,  capitulation — historically,  these  are 
the  stages  in  the  bearing  of  the  theologians  to  the  idea  of 
evolution.  But,  since  there  are  theories  and  theories,  all  alike 
must  be  abandoned  in  favor  of  a  critical  attitude.  It  must 
be  admitted  that  science,  under  the  guidance  of  the  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis,  has  properly  drawn  the  liistory  of  the 
religious  and  moral  life  of  humanity  into  the  region  of  its 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    253 

inquiry.  Becoming  and  change  are  characteristic  of  moral 
and  religious  ideas  as  of  any  others.  The  application  of 
evolution  to  nature  has  discredited  the  dogma  of  "the  state 
of  perfection"  at  the  beginning  of  human  history,  so  that  that 
article  of  faith  can  no  longer  be  considered  as  essential  to 
Christianity.  Similarly,  the  old  idea  of  an  innate  content  of 
conscience  or  of  an  original  God-consciousness,  the  same  in 
content  for  all  men — each  an  effect  whose  cause  is  super- 
historical  and  therefore  divine— must  yield  to  the  idea  of 
immanent  and  genetic  origin.  But  how  did  man  come  to  be, 
and  lioiD  did  the  religious  and  moral  ideas  originate  ?  Here, 
again,  our  contention  is  v^ith  evolution,  not  as  science,  but  as 
philosophy;  i.  e.,  naturalism.  As  naturalism  explains  legally 
and  etiologically  the  becoming  of  nature  in  the  use  of  only 
the  principle  of  mechanism  to  the  exclusion  of  the  principle 
of  spontaneity,  so  it  seeks  in  an  analogous  manner  to  explain 
the  whole  history  of  the  spiritual,  the  moral,  and  the  religious 
life  of  humanity.  The  clash  of  egoistic  interests,  like  that 
of  the  atoms  of  materialism,  develops  the  economic  orders, 
the  precipitate  of  which  are  the  religious  and  moral  ideas. 
The  altruistic  interests  are  fortified  over  against  the  egoistic 
by  the  struggle  of  existence.  Reflection  on  what  is  useful 
to  the  individual  and  to  classes  leads  to  the  rise  of  moral 
concepts.  This,  and  such  as  this,  is  naturalism  in  history. 
It  assumes,  first,  that  empirical  science  says  the  last  word 
concerning  the  genesis  of  our  religio-ethical  possessions,  and, 
secondly,  that  the  scientific  account  of  this  genesis  not  only 
lends  no  support  to  the  ideal  view  of  the  world  which  Chris- 
tian apologetics  vindicates,  but  undermines  it.  Here,  too, 
naturalism  assumes  that  the  empirical  lowliness  of  the  origin 
of  religious  and  moral  views,  as  science  knows  origins, 
excludes  the  inner  dignity  of  those  views,  the  worth  of  reli- 
gion and  morality,  as  life  knows  worth.  The  refutation  of  the 
naturalistic  apprehension  of  history  consists  in  showing,  first, 


254    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

that  if  it  disregards  the  limits  of  explanation,  as  science 
counts  explanation,  in  its  theory  of  nature,  much  more  does 
it  do  so  in  its  application  of  natural  science  to  history ;  and 
that  if  there  be  more  to  nature  than  natural  science  exhibits, 
much  more  is  this  true  with  respect  to  a  natural  science  of 
history;  and,  secondly,  that  if  its  denial  of  theology  in  its 
view  of  nature  be  dogmatic,  much  more  is  this  the  case  with 
respect  to  its  denial  of  teleology  in  history. 

The  outcome  of  naturalism  is  that  human  history  is  a  part 
of  the  cosmic  and  natural  mechanism — only  this  and  nothing 
more.  There  is  nothing  distinctive  and  distinguished  about 
man.  But  that  naturalism  has  made  out  its  case  is  not  so 
clear  as  modernity  has  assumed.  At  the  outset  the  fact 
should  be  acknowledged  and  appreciated  that  process  or 
movement,  of  which  science  has  so  much  to  say,  does  not 
occur  in  man  merely  as  it  does  in  nature.  It  does  not 
bear  man  onward  with  itself  as  a  stream  does  a  wave  on  its 
bosom.  Man  reflectively  experiences  the  process;  he  surveys 
it;  he  forms  a  picture  of  the  whole.  This  signifies  no 
inconsiderable  difference  between  the  human  and  the  merely 
mechanical.  For  man  could  not  do.  this,  were  he  a  phenom- 
enon of  the  mere  moment,  and  consequently  unable  to 
achieve  a  standing-place  above  the  stream  of  time.  Such  a 
standing-placfe  is  indispensable  if  occupation  with  the  past  is 
to  be  more  than  a  mere  hastening  from  impression  to  impres- 
sion, and  if  there  is  to  be  any  such  thing  as  understanding, 
fathoming,  concatenating,  what  has  gone  before.  The  fact 
that  we  can  bringf  back  dead  civilizations  and  races  to  life 
again,  that  we  can  re-experience  the  actions  and  passions, 
the  life  and  suffering,  of  former  generations,  proves  that  a 
common  nature  unites  us  with  them — otherwise  we  could  not 
resuscitate  them  and  include  them  in  an  inner  present. 
Thus,  historical  science  itself,  with  its  realization  of  the 
past,  with  its  synthetic  and  constructive  apperception — our 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  Woeld-Views    255 

whole  historical  experience,  with  its  inward  retention  of  what 
is  outwardly  past  and  gone — testifies  to  man's  transcendence 
of  mere  time,  and  against  his  mechanical  articulation  in  the 
flight  of  phenomena.  As,  were  man  nothing  more  than  one 
item  in  the  sequence  of  natural  phenomena  by  the  side  of 
others,  he  could  not  know  nature  as  science  knows  it,  so, 
were  he  nothing  more  than  an  item  in  historical  phenomena 
in  causal  connection  with  others,  he  could  have  no  science 
of  history.  In  other  words,  science  itself,  which,  modernity 
asserts,  requires  naturalism,  is  rendered  impossible  by  natu- 
ralism. 

But  our  relation  to  history  is  by  no  means  exhausted  in 
knowledge.  Life  also  passes  under  new  conditions,  since 
events  of  human  social  experience  not  merely  continue  to  be 
operative  through  mechanical  causality,  but  are  expressly 
signalized  by  human  activity.  This  is  the  case  as  regards 
monuments  and  records,  sacred  traditions  and  legal  orders. 
In  this  way  the  gage  of  battle  is  taken  up  against  the  mere 
stream  of  phenomena,  and  effort  is  made  to  wrest  therefrom 
anything  that  seems  worthy  to  be  valid  for  all  time.  This 
cannot  be  done  without  a  sundering  of  the  essential  from  the 
accidental,  without  looking  more  deeply  than  a  first  glance 
could  do,  without  an  extrication  of  the  spiritual  content  from 
the  temporal  formation.  In  such  activity  as  this,  we  do  not 
contemplate  the  phenomena  from  without,  but  we  seek  to  gain 
an  inner  relation  thereto;  they  do  not  seem  to  us  to  be 
absolutely  past,  but  there  is  something  in  them  which  outlasts 
the  mutations  of  time,  something  which,  released  and  appro- 
priated, is  able  to  enhance  our  own  life.  Thus  we  occupy 
ourselves  with  Greek  antiquity,  not  merely  to  know  what 
went  on  there,  but  to  reanimate  its  spirit  to  new  endeavors, 
to  derive  something  therefrom  for  our  own  time,  something 
that  we  cannot  produce  of  our  own  strength.  It  is  the  same 
with  ancient   Christianity,   with  the  Renaissance,  with  the 


256   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

Reformation.  We  well  know  how  much  divides  us  from 
those  epochs.  But  no  distance  keeps  us  from  seeking  inner 
communion  and  hoping  for  some  good  to  accrue  therefrom. 
We  seem  to  widen  our  present  by  a  reception  of  the  past — to 
win  a  present  of  spiritual  life  over  against  the  present  of  the 
mere  moment,  to  build  up  a  kingdom  of  the  spirit  in  the 
midst  of  the  temporal  and  the  human.  All  this  involves  a 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  human  life  is  not  driven  on  in 
the  stream  of  time  after  the  fashion  of  natural  processes. 
Human  life  is  not  in  that  stream  as  a  drop  of  water  is  in  it, 
but  as  a  strong  swimmer  is  there.  The  relation  between 
time  and  eternity  is  reversed.  We  see  all  things  sub  S'pecie 
aeternitatis.  Eternity  becomes  now  the  true  standing-place 
of  life  from  which  we  apprehend  and  sift  the  stores  of  time, 
and  get  at  the  truth.  So  far  as  its  content  is  concerned, 
truth  has  nothing  to  do  with  time.  To  be  sure,  we  men  seek 
truth  under  conditions  of  time,  and  attain  it  according  to  the 
measure  of  time;  but,  so  far  as  we  attain  it,  we  believe  that 
we  have  achieved  something  which  is  independent  of  all  time, 
which  is  and  is  to  be  valid  over  against  all  time.  And  as  of 
the  true,  so  of  the  good.  The  good  is  different  from  the 
useful.  The  useful  follows  the  altering  situation  of  the 
times.  What  was  useful  yesterday  can  injure  today.  But  all 
effort  after  the  good  involves  the  conviction  that  it  is  directed 
to  something  that  has  worth  independently  of  all  time,  over 
against  all  time;  something  that  judges  time  and  is  not 
judged  by  time.  In  this  way  we  reach  a  super-historical 
reality  within  history,  eternal  truth  bursting  forth  through 
all  the  conflicts  and  mutations  of  time.  And  on  this  account 
our  view  of  history  and  of  our  relation  to  it  must  necessarily 
be  different  from  what  it  would  otherwise  be.  The  totality 
of  becoming  is  not  an  uninterrupted  stream — the  naturalistic 
regressus  which  in  the  end  explains  everything  by  nothing 
is  far  more  absurd  here  than  in  our  thought  of  nature — but 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  Woeld-Views    257 

a  new  kind  of  life  arises  with  the  entrance  of  the  life  of  the 
spirit;  and  the  principle  of  mechanism,  of  habit,  cannot 
account  for  it,  but  appeal  must  be  made  to  the  principle  of 
spontaneity,  of  new  beginnings.  This  new  kind  of  life  is 
not  a  miraculous  donation  to  us — nothing  is  that,  or  can  be — 
but  a  creation  through  us;  it  requires  our  co-operation;  it 
summons  us  to  a  decision  which  we  ourselves  make.  By 
eternity  we  must  mean  the  eternal  truth,  the  eternal  good- 
ness, the  eternal  beauty;  but  truth,  goodness,  beauty,  cannot 
be  given  and  received  passively,  simply  because  they  are 
eternal.  They  are  created  and  conquered  by  the  sweat  of 
our  brow  as  we  till  life's  thorny  fields.  Such  precious  har- 
vests cannot  be  garnered  by  an  easy  supernaturalism.  Like 
all  values,  eternity  is  not  simply  a  gift,  it  is  a  task.  Super- 
naturalism  agrees  with  naturalism  in  disregarding  the  prin- 
ciple of  activity  and  creativeness  in  reality.  Values  by 
mechanism,  values  by  miraculism,  but  none  by  freedom — 
denied,  in  different  ways  indeed,  by  both — by  which  alone 
values  can  be  such.  Eternal  truth  is  imbedded  in  the  beingr 
of  man.  But  man  fully  possesses  it,  experiences  its  fruition, 
only  through  unspeakable  labor,  under  conditions  of  time. 
Human  life  has  the  twofold  task  of  establishing  itself  in  the 
eternal  and  of  incessantly  reconstructing  the  eternal.  Thus 
it  is  not  by  speculation,  but  by  deepening  the  spiritual  life 
of  man,  that  the  incompatibility  between  the  ceaseless  change 
of  the  human  situation,  which  historical  science  shows,  and 
the  unchangeability  of  the  truth  on  which  religion  rests,  is 
overcome.  Development  does  not  signify  a  movement  of 
truth  itself,  but  a  movement  within  truth. 

But  we  are  wandering  from  that  ethical  decision  involved 
in  the  new  life,  of  which  we  were  thinking.  With  such 
necessity  of  an  ethical  decision,  the  whole  ceases  to  be  a 
nature-process ;  it  is  a  new  type  of  being,  a  new  stage ;  it  wins 
an  ethical  character.     Because  it  does,  it  is  less  at  the  mercy 


258    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

of  the  decisions  of  the  moment.  Thus  a  free  place  is  con- 
quered for  that  estimation  of  history  which  religion 
represents.  History  becomes  the  home  and  hearth  of  values, 
or  the  garden  in  which  the  fair  flowers  of  the  ideal  bloom. 
If  these  reflections  carry  conviction  to  the  mind,  it  follows 
that  there  is  more  in  historical  reality  than  causal  explana- 
tion is  competent  to  exhibit,  and  that,  consequently,  the 
naturalistic  identification  of  historical  reality  with  the 
exhibition  made  by  the  natural  science  of  history  amounts 
to  an  abbreviation  and  depotentiation  of  the  fulness  and 
values  of  historical  life.  It  is  not  meant  that  the  categories 
of  law  and  cause  do  not  apply  to  the  historical,  or  that  any 
region  or  content  of  history  is  exempt  from  them.  Opponents 
of  evolution  are  wont  to  conclude  from  the  infinite  complex- 
ity of  historical  phenomena  to  the  impossibility  of  scientific 
explanation.  They  also  infer  that  outstanding  leading  indi- 
viduals, conservative,  critical,  creative  spirits,  involve  a 
breach  of  continuity  of  development,  originate  causelessly 
and  lawlessly.  They  treat  a  great  historical  character  in 
isolation  as  so  much  objective  fact.  Some  are  applying 
the  historical  method  to  "Church"  and  "Bible,"  from  the 
evolutionary  standpoint,  but  remain  back  at  the  pre- 
evolutionary  standpoint,  so  far  as  their  conception,  <?.  g.,  of 
Jesus  is  concerned.  Such  thinkers  are  still  under  the  scholas- 
tic yoke.  To  them  it  seems  a  compromise  of  an  almost  blas- 
phemous sort  to  regard  Jesus  as  historically  placed  and  deter- 
mined, and  as  animated  by  his  social  environment.  All  this 
is  not  our  meaning.  Because  causal  relations  are  too  complex 
or  too  elusive  for  the  finite  mind,  it  does  not  follow  that  they 
are  not  there;  Omniscience  could  detect  and  comprehend 
them.  Causal  and  lawful  phenomena  are  not  on  that  account 
worthless;  nor  are  causeless  and  lawless  events  or  persons  — 
i.  e.,  miracles' — on  that  account  worthful.     Causation  and 

1  It  is  still  the  old  world-view :  there  are  two  separate  universes ;  one  has  the 
values,  the  other  means  and  materials.    The  miracle  is  nothing  but  a  scheme  for 


Naturalistic  and  Keligious  World-Views    259 

worth,  even  the  highest  worth,  are  not  exclusive.  We  grant 
the  applicability  of  causality  and  legality  to  all  that  is 
historical,  as  certainly  as  to  all  that  is  natural;  we  grant  the 
principle  of  stability,  of  derivability,  of  mechanism.  Our 
position  is  that  there  is  more  in  historical  reality  than  even 
Omniscience  could  exhibit  in  the  use  of  only  the  categories  of 
law  and  cause,  in  the  use  of  only  the  principle  of  mechanism ; 
much  as  it  is  true  that  there  is  no  historical  reality  which  is 
exempt  from  these  categories  and  this  principle.  Thus,  if 
naturalism  be  in  a  degree  right  in  its  affirmation,  it  is, 
according  to  our  contention,  wholly  wrong  in  its  negation. 
It  does  not  recognize  the  limits  of  explanation  to  expose  all 
that  there  is  to  a  thing — be  it  our  original  endowments,  be 
it  the  original  power  of  leading  spirits,  or  be  it  the  creative 
"moment"  in  all  history  and  in  every  member  thereof.  Nor 
does  it  recognize  that  the  explanatory  is  not  our  only  atti- 
tude to  reality.  Nowhere,  whether  we  think  of  nature  or 
of  history,  does  naturalism  do  justice  to  the  deep  of  things. 
It  is  a  merit  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche  to  have  opposed  the 
milieu  of  life  for  which  naturalism  stands.  Milieu  belittles 
personality.  Nietzsche  would  measure  all  moral  values  with 
the  measure  of  the  unconditioned  sovereignty  of  the  ego.  He 
held  that  the  goal  of  culture  must  be  to  make  man,  man  the 
individual,  as  strong  and  rich  as  possible.  His  mission — 
for  he  had  a  mission^ was  to  secure  the  individual  his 
rights.  Hence  he  fought  against  two  fronts:  history  and 
mechanism.     Nietzsche  recoojnized  the  dancrer  of  our  beins: 

O  o  o 

smothered  beneath  the  burden  of  the  past,  and  proclaimed 
the  right  of  the  present,  of  creation  from  within,  of  life  out 

getting  some  of  t\xQ  values  out  of  the  one  world  into  the  other.  There  are  many  who 
feel  that  no  shock  is  given  to  intellectual  consistency  by  assuming  continuity,  and 
then  puncturing  it  all  along  with  miraculous  creations  in  order  to  account  for  values 
which  seem  to  them  larger  than  those  of  normal  experience.  We  want  one  consist- 
ent worliing  theory  of  the  universe.  If  that  is  not  adequate  to  account  for  appar- 
ently supernatural  events,  we  may  make  over  the  hypothesis ;  but  it  is  a  little  too 
naive  to  work  two  mutually  exclusive  hypotheses  at  the  same  time. 


260   The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

of  the  immediate.'  Life  has  rights;  history  should  serve 
life,  not  bury  it  beneath  the  dust.  Who  doubts  that  he  is 
right  in  this?  And  who  doubts  that  he  is  right  in  his  war 
against  mechanism  in  the  life  of  the  human  spirit?  Natu- 
ralism would  like  to  transform  man  into  a  well-regulated 
machine.  All  the  cogs  fit  beautifully  into  each  other,  and 
there  is  not  wanting  the  oil  of  the  feeling  of  necessity;  but 
there  is  nothing  in  man  which  cannot  be  explained  and 
patented  scientifically.  Knowledge  plays  the  predominant 
role ;  the  scholar  is  the  ideal  man ;  science  takes  the  place  of 
religion.  Against  all  this  Nietzsche  thundered  in  the  inter- 
est of  i^ersoncditij.  He  ridiculed  science  as  folly,  denied 
every  objective  norm,  preached  the  right  of  passion  as 
against  logic,  instinct  as  against  Dressur,  the  wilderness  as 
against  the  schoolroom,  heroism  as  against  utility-morals,^ 
greatness  as  against  philistinism,  and  the  intoxicating  poesy 
of  life  as  against  its  regulation.  And  in  all  this,  barring  the 
exaggerations  of  the  poet,  he  was  right  fundamentally.  We 
have  cause  to  thank  Nietzsche.  He  broke  down  ramparts 
against  which  we  were  too  weak.  He  would  give  back  the 
deep  again  to  man  and  awaken  a  great  yearning.  Yearning 
is  combined  with  a  knowledge  of  a  defect,  and  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  belongs  to  the  spiritually  poor.  The  soul  that  has 
once  dreamed  of  Uehermensch  will  not  become  a  Philistine 
so  easily  again;  perhaps  may  find  the  way  to  the  real  Ucber- 
mensch,  and  cease  to  be  content  with  the  milieu  of  naturalism. 
Certainly,  to  champion,  as  Nietzsche  does,  the  principle  of 
personality  against  the  exclusiveness  of  the  naturalistic  prin- 
ciple of  mechanism  is  the  true  counterpart  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  primacy  of  the  principle  of  personality  against  the 
absoluteness  of  the  supernaturalistic  principle  of  tradition. 
Mechanism  and  tradition — it  is  this  stabilism  with   which 

1  "Von  Nutzen  und  Nachteil  der  Historie  "  {Unzeitgemdsse  Betrachtungen). 

2  '■'■Man  does  not  seek  after  happiness ;  only  an  Englishman  seeks  after  happiness ; 
I  seek  not  after  my  happiness,  I  seek  after  my  work,'" 


Naturalistic  and  Keligious  World-Views    261 

modern  relativism  is  in  conflict;  and  the  rights  of  personality 
are  not  respected  by  either.  As  against  stabilism,  which  also 
involves  the  exclusive  subjection  of  the  spiritual  life  to  nature 
and  its  legality,  to  tradition  and  its  authority — naturalism 
and  supernaturalism — the  underivability  of  the  spiritual 
must  be  set  forth,  the  activity  and  spontaneity  of  the  spiritual, 
its  progress  toward  seZ/-dependence  and  freedom.  As  it  is 
the  traditional  that  is  derivative  and  instrumental,  while  the 
spiritual  is  the  original  and  teleological,  so  it  is  the  mechani- 
cal that  is  secondary  and  subordinate,  the  spiritual  that  is 
primary  and  efficient.  In  first  intention,  tradition  and 
mechanism  are  products,  not  causes;  life  makes  them,  they 
do  not  make  life.  And  as  against  relativism,  the  stability 
and  persistence  of  the  personal  must  be  established — the 
eternally  worthful — but  this  can  be  done  only  by  showing 
the  creative  and  solidifying  power  of  the  spiritual  life,  as  it 
makes  use  of  the  material  of  tradition  and  nature.  Not  to 
copy  either  tradition  or  nature,  not  to  be  enslaved  by  them, 
but  in  the  use  of  both  to  organize  the  self,  to  become  persons 
—  it  is  this  which  morality  and  religion  require,  and  which 
science  not  only  allows,  but  countenances.  One  might  say, 
tradition  is  the  mechanism  of  spirit  in  history ;  mechanism, 
the  tradition  of  spirit  in  nature. 

These  thoughts  are  closely  connected  with  the  question  of 
teleology  and  evolution — the  question  as  to  meaning  and 
end  in  history,  of  which  something  more  should  be  said.  In 
a  beautiful  and  illuminating  way,  Professor  Paulsen  has 
briefly  presented  the  argument  here  as  follows: 

Man  is  more  than  an  apparatus  for  registering  the  real;  there- 
fore he  has  not  merely  science,  but  also  poetry  and  art,  faith  and 
religion.  There  is  a  point  at  least  where  one  passes  beyond  mere 
knowledge,  the  registering  of  facts  —  this  is  his  own  life  and  his  own 
future:  one  puts  a  meaning  into  one's  life  and  gives  it  a  direction 
to  something  which  is  not  as  yet,  but  which  will  be,  will  be  through 
one's  will.    Thus    faith   springs  up   along  with  knowledge:  he 


262    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

believes  in  the  actualization  of  this  the  goal  of  his  life,  if  he  is  at 
all  in  earnest.  Since,  however,  his  life-goal  is  not  an  isolated  one, 
but  is  included  in  the  historical  life  of  a  people,  finally  of  humanity, 
he  also  believes  in  the  future  of  his  j)eople,  in  the  victorious  future 
of  the  true  and  the  right  and  the  good  in  humanity.  Whoever 
devotes  his  life  to  a  cause  believes  in  that  cause,  and  this  faith, 
whatever  his  knowledge  may  otherwise  be,  always  has  something 
of  the  form  of  a  religion.  If  this  faith  posits  an  inner  connection 
between  the  real  and  the  worthful  within  history,  if  it  sees  there 
something  akin  to  a  reason  resident  in  things  themselves,  or  a 
righteousness  taking  sides  with  the  right  and  the  good,  and  lead- 
ing them  victoriously  against  all  hostile  powers,  then  from  this 
point  a  step  farther  may  be  taken  which  will  be  only  natural 
progress.  The  human-historical  life  is  in  tm-n  itself  not  an  isolated 
life;  it  is  so  imbedded  in  the  universal  course  of  nature  that  in  no 
wise  can  it  be  sundered  therefrom.  If  now  the  law  holds  good 
that  truth  at  bottom  and  in  the  long  run  is  strong  and  victorious 
against  lies,  right  against  wrong,  good  against  evil,  appearances 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  why  should  it  not  be  permissible 
to  generalize  this  relation,  and  to  believe  in  the  power  of  the  good 
comprehending  entire  reality  ?  Least  of  all  should  this  idea,  so  it 
would  seem,  be  opposed  by  those  who  so  decidedly  maintain  the 
uniformity  of  the  course  of  the  world  and  the  inclusion  of  history  in 
the  universal  course  of  nature.  Whoever  believes  in  steady  prog- 
ress, in  a  self-realizing  meaning  in  history,  and  at  the  same  time 
conceives  the  life  of  humanity  as  a  section  of  the  universal  life  of 
nature,  has  thus  the  presuppositions  which  must  consistently  lead 
him  to  faith  in  a  meaning  in  things  in  general;  to  faith,  not  to 
knowledge  and  proofs,  for  meaning  in  history,  nay,  meaning  in 
one's  own  life,  is  not  an  affair  of  knowledge  and  proof.' 

Fine  as  this  statement  is,  it  falls  short  in  some  particulars. 
The  idea  that  the  whole  historical  process  of  the  spiritual 
life  of  humanity  is  a  progressive  unfolding  of  the  cosmic 
reason  received  its  classic  expression  in  the  speculative 
philosophy.     Its  affirmation  of  positive  meaning  and  end  in 

1  Op.  cif.,  pp.  8,  9.  With  reference  to  the  last  remark  above,  I  have  sought  to 
show  in  previous  pages,  while  discussing  the  insufficiency  of  the  mathematico- 
mechanical  explanation  of  nature,  that  natural  science  is  itself  not  possible  on  the 
basis  of  naturalism,  but  that  it  gives  a  certain  support  to  the  teleology  of  religious 
faith. 


Natuealistio  and  Keligious  World-Views    263 

history  is  attractive  to  those  who  occupy  the  Christian  stand- 
point. But  it  is  not  yet  itself  the  Christian  faith.  It  is 
defective  in  two  particulars:  First,  Christianity  does  not 
found  its  conviction  of  a  rational  end  and  meaning  in  the 
history  of  the  human  spirit  upon  the  contemplation  of  the 
totality  of  history,  but  upon  that  course  of  historical  develop- 
ment which  reaches  its  culmination  in  Jesus.  Thus  faith 
takes  a  different  path  from  the  speculative  philosophy.  The 
latter  passes  from  meaning  in  the  whole  to  meaning  in  the 
part;  the  former,  from  meaning  in  the  part  to  meaning  in  the 
whole.  Besides,  the  facts  not  only  do  not  require,  they 
do  not  warrant,  the  Hegelian  hypothesis  of  an  ortholinear 
progressive  development  in  the  whole  history  of  humanity. 
The  real  does  not  support  the  speculative  ideal  here.  There 
is  so  much  that  is  perverse,  retrogressive,  abortive,  as  against 
a  steadily  ascending  progress  of  development,  that  counte- 
nance is  thereby  lent  to  the  doubt  regarding  the  rational 
meaning  of  history.  The  Christian  way  is  more  faithful  tO' 
the  facts  and  more  satisfactory  in  the  mode  of  its  generaliza- 
tion than  the  Hegelian,  much  as  there  is  kinship  between 
them.  These  considerations  are  important  as  bearing  upon 
the  problem  whether  the  ideal  of  perfection  can  be  in  the 
past.  It  certainly  cannot  be  according  to  the  Hegelian 
speculation.  Secondly,  the  speculative  philosophy  reckons 
only  with  the  logical  necessity  of  development;  but  Chris- 
tianity sees  in  the  phenomena  of  disorder  and  degeneration 
the  effect  of  free  sinful  acts  and  their  folly.  The  speculative 
philosophy  values  individuals  only  as  transitory  bearers  of 
the  world-spirit  which  is  alone  eternal.  To  Christianity  it 
is  the  individual  that  is  of  decisive  worth,  in  whose  eternal 
destiny  and  consummation  Christianity  has  faith.  Accord- 
ing to  the  speculative  philosophy,  the  movement  of  historical 
life,  emerging  from  the  All,  returns  into  the  All;  according 
to  Christianity,  an  eternal   kingdom  of  personal  spirits  is 


264   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

formed  in  history.  In  all  this  it  is  not  denied  that  an 
attempt  at  a  philosophy  of  history  grows,  with  inner  neces- 
sity, out  of  the  Christian  faith.  Paul  made  it  as  the  burden 
of  all  his  thinking.  So  did  Augustine.  So  must  we.  Such 
philosophy,  however,  falls  short,  not  only  if  it  stops  with 
the  old  Darwinian  teleology  without  real  purpose,  but  also 
if  it  stops  with  a  conception  of  spirit  which  is  but  nature 
called  by  another  name — nature  with  its  necessity,  its  care- 
lessness of  the  individual  and  carefulness  of  the  whole — and 
does  not  dare  to  advance  to  the  idea  that  a  divine  plan  is 
unfolding  itself  in  history,  and  divine  purposive  thoughts 
actualizing  themselves  in  single  stages  of  history.  The  con- 
cept of  development  rules  in  history,  and  according  to  the 
teleological  or  idealistic  side  of  the  concept  at  that. 

It  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  history  as  development  of 
a  divine  plan  that  the  history  of  the  Christian  revelation  is  to 
be  understood.  But  there  is  an  etiological  as  well  as  a  teleo- 
logical side  to  development.  According  to  the  idea  of 
development,  the  life  of  humanity  constitutes  a  vast  system, 
stands  in  a  great  connection,  in  which  all  is  fruit  and  all  is 
seed,  and  in  which  all  is  held  together  through  great, 
all-controlling  orders.  Today  brings  forth  only  what  yester- 
day prepared  for,  as  the  fruit  grows  out  of  the  blossom,  and 
the  blossom  never  out  of  the  fruit.  In  this  great  connection 
the  life  of  the  individual  belongs.  As  one  can  understand 
the  palm  only  when  one  knows  that  it  grows  in  the  hot 
South,  so  the  individual,  the  great  man  even,  is  under- 
standable only  in  connection  with  the  environment  in  which 
he  grows.  Then,  how  can  he  except  any  part  of  historical 
reality  from  a  revelatory  function,  to  whom  the  great 
thought  that  all  that  is  human  forms  a  unity  has  dawned? 
Owing  to  this  etiological  side  of  development,  we  have  the 
problem,  e.  g.,  of  Jesus.  The  thought  of  the  eternity  of 
Jesus  Christ,  in  the  sense  that  he  is  a  visitor  in  history,  to 


Natukalistig  and  Keligious  Woeld-Views    265 

which  he  does  not  systematically  belong,  only  fixes  for  us 
an  impenetrable  mystery.  Shall  we  then  apply  the  idea  of 
development  to  his  entrance  into  history?  But  then  also  to 
the  course  of  his  consciousness?  It  must  be  admitted  that 
there  is  no  escape  from  doing  so  to  him  who  thinks  with 
modern  presuppositions.  But  the  real  question  of  contro- 
versy is  not  as  to  the  "that,"  but  as  to  the  "how,"  of  his 
development.  Does  the  becoming  and  confirming  of  his 
innermost  consciousness  admit  of  psychological  explana- 
tion? Science  makes  this  attempt,  and  no  one  can  say  it 
nay.  But  naturalism  would  explain  Jesus  as  a  remainder- 
less  construction  on  the  part  of  environmental  forces,  just  as 
we  have  seen  that  naturalism  denies  the  principle  of  unde- 
rivability  and  new  beginnings  in  all  nature  and  all  history. 
But  in  the  case  of  Jesus  as  elsewhere,  admitting  the  action 
of  mechanism  and  tradition — or,  better,  the  developmental 
factors  and  connections — we  yet  face  the  fact  that  this  inner- 
most consciousness  of  Jesus,  like  the  interior  of  all  individu- 
ality, natural  and  historical,  cannot  be  remainderlessly 
explained  by  reference  to  the  factors  external  to  him.  The 
decisive  factor  lies  in  Jesus  himself.  The  outstanding  orim- 
nality  of  Jesus — a  result  of  which,  to  be  sure,  faith  was  cer- 
tain before  science  examined  it — presses  itself  home  to  us 
here.  But  the  greater  the  originality  of  a  person  is,  the 
greater  the  fascination  of  the  effort  at  psychological  expla- 
nation becomes.  To  explain  his  consciousness  is  to  refer  it 
to  inner  processes  otherwise  known.  But  the  explanatory 
analysis  collapses  on  the  immediacy  of  his  consciousness. 
Ultimately,  we  stand,  e.  g.,  before  the  insoluble  datum  of 
his  certainty  of  a  special  communion  with  God  and  of  his 
knowledge  of  God  arising  thereby.  It  is  not  possible  to 
escape  from  the  recognition  of  an  active  and  creative  moment 
in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  which,  just  on  that  account, 
cannot  be  causally  explained  by  articulating  it  in  the  system 


266    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

of  development.  It  is  not  meant  that  the  positive  certainty 
of  that  which  is  revelation  in  him  reposes  on  this  inex- 
plicability:  it  reposes  on  the  content  of  the  life  of  the  spirit 
dwelling  in  him  and  proceeding  from  him.  Our  contact 
with  such  an  inexplicable  point,  which,  in  the  nature  of  the 
case,  we  cannot  resolve  into  its  components  and  derive  from 
its  causes,  only  impels  us  to  mount  into  another  dimension, 
so  to  speak,  with  our  whence?  where  we  do  not  find  the 
answer  by  way  of  an  explanatory  metaphysical  hypothesis, 
but  by  a  value- judgment,  necessary  to  the  evaluating  heart 
and  conscience.  The  judgment  of  faith  is  that  this  Jesus 
Christ,  son  of  his  people  and  of  his  time — the  grain  of  truth 
in  naturalism — yet,  on  account  of  the  content  of  his  person 
by  virtue  of  which  he  is  Savior  and  Lord — a  content  which 
was  not  a  donation  to  him,  but  a  creation  by  him  —  is  self- 
uplifted  above  the  whole  evolutionary  series,  and  has  con- 
quered release  from  all  the  relativities  inconsistent  with  his 
being  the  home  of  eternal  and  permanent  values.  And 
while  science — religio-historical  science  here — cannot  enact 
and  found  this  judgment,  it  cannot  refuse  to  admit  its  possi- 
bility, since  science  itself  recognizes  the  inadequacy  of  its 
causal  category,  but  posits  the  principle  of  spontaneity  and 
self-activity  and  new  beginnings.  Such  recognition  and 
such  positing  not  only  do  allow,  but  even  countenance,  that 
judgment  of  faith  which  science  as  such  cannot  enact. 
Granted  once  this  factor  of  spontaneity  and  originality, 
immanent  and  constant  in  all  reality,  natural  and  historical, 
who  shall  limit  the  energy  and  significance  of  its  efficiency 
at  any  point  in  the  development?  Granted  that,  as  tradi- 
tion in  history,  so  mechanism  in  nature,  are  alike  deriva- 
tive, not  ends  in  themselves,  but  means  to  an  end,  the  static 
precipitate  of  dynamic  purposive  force,  ministrant  to  the 
ends  of  the  latter — I  care  not  how  organically  and  inti- 
mately this  dynamic  and  this  static  are  related  to  each  other. 


Natuealistic  and  Religious  Wokld-Views    267 

so  unitary  that  as  I  look  at  the  static  only  I  am  materialist, 
at  the  dynamic  only  I  am  idealist — yet  grant  the  primacy  of 
the  dynamic  as  original  and  active,  who  shall  limit  its  freedom 
and  power  of  self-expression  in  forms  of  the  historical  life? 
We  say  that  it  stands  to  reason  that  perfection  can  come  only 
in  the  future,  not  in  the  past.  But  when  we  look  at  things 
sub  specie  aeterm'tatis,  no  such  significance  attaches  to  past 
and  future. 

So  much  apropos  the  entrance  of  Jesus  into  the  world. 
It  cannot  be  causally  explained  with  the  help  of  develop- 
mental thoughts.  The  order  and  system  of  human  genera- 
tions do  not  account  for  it.  We  are  confronted  with  the 
impossibility  of  exhibiting  in  the  definite  human  life  whence 
he  sprang  factors  of  an  evolutionary  character,  from  which 
the  origin  of  his  person  can  be  explained  by  the  sole  prin- 
ciple of  derivability.  The  empirical  inexplicability  of  Jesus 
may  as  well  be  conceded.  But,  unless  one  conceives  the 
immanent  and  constant  moment  of  spontaneity  and  novelty  in 
all  reality  as  a  breach  of  continuity,  in  which  case  the  etio- 
logical side  of  reality  is  eliminated,  the  degi'ee  of  spontaneity 
and  novelty  in  the  case  of  Jesus  need  not  be  construed  as 
breach.  Such  construction  is  possible  only  on  the  basis  of  a 
principle  which,  universally  applied,  would  condemn  us  to 
permanent  intellectual  confusion.  How,  then,  interpret  the 
degree?  Shall  we  say  that  the  life  of  Jesus  is  inexplicable 
from  the  antecedent  connection  of  development,  and  there- 
fore may  seem  to  us  to  enter  ex  abi'upfo;  but  that  it  does  not 
geem  so  to  God;  that  God  from  the  beginning  implanted  in 
humanity  a  force  which  had  not  been  effective  before,  but 
passed — and  was  intended  to  pass — into  effectiveness  in  an 
orderly  manner  at  such  a  time,  producing  this  "bright  con- 
summate flower"  in  such  a  soil  and  from  such  a  climate? 
Shall  we  say  that  this  is  to  be  conceived  consistently  with  a 
constant  and  causal  development  of  forces  with  which  the 


268    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

world  was  endowed  from  the  beginning?  No  saltus  and  no 
hiatus  f  It  is  possible,  it  is  in  fact  thinkable,  but  we  cannot 
think  it  through,  that,  for  the  eternal  God,  what  emerges  at 
definite  points  in  the  time-series  was  already  eternally  ordered 
in  the  causal  system  of  development.  But  it  is  also  possible 
that  all  this  may  be  otherwise,  that  an  entirely  new  sjnritual 
force,  not  even  formerly  latent  in  the  cosmic  system,  might 
appear  therein.  Nothing  hinders  us  from  assuming  that  the 
course  of  the  cosmic  process  is  like  a  symphony  in  which  at 
definite  points  new  instruments  appear  even  in  moments  of 
absolute  stillness.  To  say,  moreover,  that  the  most  perfect 
instrument,  most  significant  for  the  whole  symphony,  must 
appear  at  the  end,  is  an  arbitrary  assumption. 

Of  one  thing  we  may  be  sure,  at  all  events:  the  ongoing 
of  existence  is  not  a  matter  of  even  pace,  of  ortholinear  uni- 
formity. In  the  vast  cosmic  process  as  a  whole,  there  have 
been  crises;  if  at  times  a  day  has  been  a  thousand  years,  at 
other  times  a  thousand  years  have  been  but  a  day.  Forces 
that  have  gathered  slowly  hasten  to  a  consummation  in  such 
velocity  that  a  cosmic  epoch  ensues.  Which  epoch  is  most 
effective  and  significant  in  the  history  of  this  tumultuous 
universe  is  not  to  be  determined  by  the  mere  date  of  its 
occurrence.  And  in  the  differentiation  and  specialization  of 
aboriginal  cosmic  stuff  into  separate  worlds  there  is  no  ante- 
cedent impossibility  in  the  way  of  one  of  these  worlds  being 
larger  than  any  of  the  others.  Similarly,  if  we  think  of  that 
section  of  the  cosmic  movement  which  we  call  human  history, 
we  find  no  dead-level  uniformity  there,  and  no  constant 
quantitative  or  qualitative  advancement.  Each  new  moment 
is  not  more  effective  than  the  preceding,  nor  is  it  the  home 
of  more  value.  As  in  the  individual  life,  so  in  history,  there 
are  great  moments.  The  self-effectuation  of  a  spiritual  world 
in  history — where  an  inner  history  is  set  off  in  strong  relief 
from  an  outer,  an  esoteric  from  an  exoteric,  a  real  from  an 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    269 

apparent  —  is  not  consummated  by  quiet  and  uniform  accumu- 
lation. The  supremely  wortbful  does  not  happen  every  day. 
Turning-points  come  in  which  new  forces  break  forth — new 
fountains  from  rocks  where  no  sign  of  water  is — ^and  impel 
the  life  of  the  spirit  in  new  directions;  and  such  breaking- 
forth  will  bring  with  it  a  freshness  of  life  and  a  pureness  of 
expression  that  are  classic.  To  be  sure,  it  will  experience 
inevitable  depotentiation  in  later  amalgamation  with  other 
formations,  and  especially  on  account  of  the  ceaseless  counter- 
action of  our  poor  and  petty  humanity.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  we  cannot  be  too  grateful  for  the  privilege  of  looking 
back  ever  again  to  those  classic  times;  to  those  high  hills  of 
God  whence  our  strength  comes;  to  those  times  in  which 
new  spiritual  forces  enter  into  human  existence,  or  at  least 
first  attain  to  full  effectiveness  there;  looking  back,  let  it  be 
repeated,  not  to  subordinate  one's  self  slavishly  to  them,  not 
to  copy  them  as  literally  and  as  totally  as  possible,  but  to 
penetrate  through  the  human  form  to  the  timeless  truth 
whose  first  temporal  vessel  they  were.  But  classic  times  are 
intimately  interwoven  with  great  personalities.  Great  per- 
sonalities are  characterized  by  uniting  disposition  and  power, 
worth  and  energy ;  by  grasping  the  spiritual  life  in  some  of 
its  aspects  as  an  end  in  itself  —  that  life  of  the  spirit  which 
the  average  of  humanity  is  wont  to  treat  as  a  side-issue  and 
as  mere  means  for  other  ends;  and  by  carrying  through  to  a 
successful  issue  the  inner  necessities  of  that  life,  albeit  they 
fall  themselves  victims  to  the  vulgar  reality  about  them.  The 
naturalistic  dragging-down  and  abasement  of  great  person- 
alities in  favor  of  the  masses,  this  performance  for  molehills 
rather  than  for  the  white  apocalypse  of  alpine  summits,  this 
plebeianism  in  the  apprehension  of  history,  has  its  roots  in 
oblivion  to  the  self-dependence  of  spiritual  life,  and  conse- 
quently to  all  greatness  of  humankind.  One  further  step 
may  be  taken  in  this  connection.     Life  is  not  speciesless. 


270    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Keligion 

It  tends  to  quite  sharply  accentuated  species-formations. 
There  is  no  illimitable  homogeneous  manifoldness  of  life 
anywhere,  but  a  limited  number  of  types  which  maintain 
their  peculiarity  through  all  mutations.  Certainly  this  is 
true  in  the  human  circle.  There  are  pure  ground-tones 
sounding  through  all  the  manifold  confusion  of  the  human. 
These  types  are  graded  in  energy  and  worth.  Now,  among 
these  types  one  could  be  outstanding  quite  easily  as 
ascendant  and  predominant — even  as  the  earth  could  have  a 
highest  mountain  range;  and  this  one  type,  of  more  worth 
than  others,  could  have  found  an  embodiment  in  an  outstand- 
ing personality — among  the  hills  of  God  the  highest — which 
abides  efiPective  and  worthful  through  all  the  mutations  of 
time  and  in  opposition  to  all  change;  one  personality  from 
which  we  may  best  see  the  content  and  purpose  and  quality 
of  the  Basic  Agent,  the  Central  Motor,  of  the  whole  Cosmic 
Evolution!  Let  it  be  understood  that  I  am  not  now  saying 
that  this  is  so.  All  I  am  saying  is  that  there  is  nothing 
in  fact  or  in  rational  theory  on  account  of  which  it  may  not 
be  so.  Already  it  has  the  merit  of  letting  us  have  a  glimpse 
of  another  kind  of  history  than  the  metamorphosis  of  the 
reality  of  spirit  into  the  meaningless  and  monotonous  onrush- 
ing  of  a  process  from  nowhere  to  nowhither,  for  which  natu- 
ralism stands.' 

At  the  end  of  this  discussion  we  may  glance  back  over 
the  way  we  have  come.  The  gist  of  our  contention  is  that 
the  rights  of  personality  are  not  fully  recognized  by  either 
supernaturalism  or  naturalism."    The  absolutism  of  the  former, 

1"  Historical  progress  cannot  be  explained  by  forces  originating  in  a  collective 
■way,  but  by  eminent  loaders,  or  heroes,  as  Carlyle  says."—  DobschUtz. 

2 The  reader  will  observe  that  I  am  preaching  a  philosophy  of  activism.  It  is 
not  that  I  deny  that  there  is  truth  in  both  the  naturalistic  and  the  supernaturalistic 
philosophy  of  passivism.  It  is  an  inner  synthesis  of  passivism  and  activism  that  is 
the  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished.  Supernaturalism  of  itself,  however,  is,  as 
one  kind  of  absolutism,  a  static  system  of  authority  whose  only  consistent  correlate 
is  uncritical,  if  not  blind,  obedience.  It  is  omnipotence  of  ideas.  Man  has  "  human 
inability"  as  regards  knowledge  of  what  he  most  needs  to  know.    Man  is  passive. 


Natuealistic  and  Eeligious  Woeld-Views    271 

in  the  shape  of  an  inviolable  tradition,  is  incompatible  with  the 
autonomy  of  personality,  the  latter  being  expected  to  copy  the 
former,  and  becoming  consequently  enslaved  and  abridged  by 
it.  What  is  true  of  personality  is  true  of  history:  supernatu- 
ralistic  absolutism  eternalizes  a  given  form  or  stage  of  the 
historical  life;  in  particular,  identifies  the  Christian  religion 
with  8  given  form  and  stage  of  its  manifestation.  This 
manifestation  becomes  a  static  and  inviolable  reality  with 
which  any  spontaneity  and  progress  of  religion  are  in  pi'in- 
ciple  inconsistent.  The  future  must  copy  the  past,  is  made 
by  the  past,  and  the  moment  of  originality  and  activity  ceases 
to  be  immanent  and  constant  in  historical  reality.  Super- 
naturalism  is  the  naturalistic  principle  of  mechanism  in 
history,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  principle  of  freedom.  Per- 
sonal certainty  in  know^ing,  willing,  and  feeling  is  denied  in 
the  interest  of  total  human  dependence  upon  the  traditional 
authority  alien  to  the  personality.  The  function  and  activity 
of  the  self  in  these  particulars  are  as  completely  retired  in 
supernaturalism  in  the  interest  of  absolute  causality  of  eccle- 
siastical mechanism  as  is  the  case  in  naturalism.  Right 
knowledge  is  a  donation ;  so  are  right  feeling  and  right  will- 
ing.    Salvation  is  by  mechanical  action,  and  not  by  personal 

The  moment  of  activity  is  denied  him  in  virtue  of  which  he  would  be  creative  in 
knowing.  Passive  adaptation  to  this  static  absolute  is  the  doctrine  of  supernatural- 
ism. Eationalism  shares  the  same  standpoint  in  its  theory  of  the  passive  way  man 
possesses  "innate  ideas,"  these  being  his  highest  knowledge;  obedience  to  innate 
ideas  takes  the  jjlace  here  of  obedience  to  tradition  in  supernaturalism.  In  common 
with  these,  naturalism  is  a  philosophy  of  passivity.  Instead  of  the  supernaturalistic 
omnipotence  of  ideas,  it  sets  forth  the  naturalistic  omnipotence  of  will ;  only  it  is  the 
will  of  nature  and  not  of  man,  as  in  the  former  case  it  is  the  ideas  of  "  God  "(=system 
of  authority)  and  not  of  man.  Passive  adaptation  to  nature-mechanism  or  to 
natural  tendency — that  is  the  sole  lot  of  man,  according  to  naturalism;  i.  c, 
passive  adaptation  of  inner  function  to  outer  condition,  instead  of  also  outer 
condition  to  inner  function,  and  by  inner  function.  The  moment  of  creative 
activity  which  is  the  essence  of  spirit  is  denied.  In  this  matter  Darwinism  is  an 
overcome  standpoint.  It  would  be  a  digression  to  show  that  capitalistic  materialism 
comes  under  the  same  category.  By  a  philosophy  of  activism  these  evils  and  crimes 
are  overcome.  And  the  principle  of  activity  as  primacy  can  alone  account  for  prog- 
ress; nothing  could  ever  have  started  to  be  with  the  primacy  of  |the  static.  But  the 
static  must  have  arisen  as  a  deposit  of  mechanism  and  of  habit  that  would  serve  as 
base  and  stay  of  further  progress. 


272    The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

organization  of  character.     At  all  events,  salvation  is  unper- 
sonal  and  subpersonal. 

Naturalism  likewise  is  hetero-causation,  to  the  exclusion 
of  auto-causation,  in  nature  and  in  history.  If  we  think  of 
man  especially,  it  is  hetero-causation  in  knowledge,  feeling, 
and  willing;  consistently,  therefore,  science,  aesthetics,  ethics, 
are  impossible  on  this  theory ;  nay,  on  its  own  theory,  natural- 
ism itself  is  impossible.  Still  it  is  an  appalling  blight  upon 
all  our  human  values  in  the  modern  world.  But  a  mighty 
reaction  has  set  in.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  the  reverberat- 
ing cry  for  more  personality,  more  freedom  from  all  that  is 
mechanical  and  conventional  and  artificial.  As  already  said, 
Nietzsche  was,  not  the  noblest,  but  the  clearest,  example  of 
this.  On  the  other  side  is  the  social  rallying-cry,  the  deep 
meaning  of  which  is  the  storm  and  stress  for  a  new  fellowship 
of  love.  Comte  was  an  example  of  this,  precisely  because, 
like  Nietzsche,  he  did  not  set  out  from  religion,  but  had  to 
end  there.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  this  new  tendency 
to  pureness  and  soundness  of  life  is  seen  in  the  passionate 
aversion  to  "culture"  and  the  equally  passionate  return  to 
nature.  Tolstoi  is  the  great  representative  of  this  tendency. 
Best  of  all,  as  deepest  undercurrent,  there  is  the  Heimweh  for 
the  holy,  the  hunger  and  thirst  for  the  unconditioned,  for  a 
truth  which  rescues  the  soul  from  the  comfortless  and  rest- 
less whirlpool  of  the  relativities  of  naturalism,  and  brings  it 
to  the  harbor  of  the  eternal.  It  is  naturalistic  monism  which 
is  the  fundamental  foe  of  all  moral  life,  and  which  must  be 
overcome,  which  is  being  overcome.  It  is  only  when  the 
terra  firma  of  a  moral  reality,  existing  of  its  own  right, 
released  from  the  nature-mechanism,  is  attained,  that  real 
satisfaction  can  be  accorded  every  other  moral  desire. 
Individualism  cannot  attain  to  a  really  healthy  unfolding  in 
a  naturalistic  world.  "What  does  nature-mechanism,  which 
is  the  last  word  of  naturalism,   care  for  personality  ?     The 


Naturalistic  and  Keligious  World-Views    273 

fate  of  Lincoln  or  Luther,  of  Paul  or  Jesus,  is  of  no  more 
importance  to  naturalism  than  that  of  a  bubble  on  the  face  of 
the  deep.  What  room  was  there  for  a  personality  in  Comte's 
mathematical  world?  The  only  reality  there  was  the  rigid 
universality  of  law,  of  which  the  individual  was  only  an 
indifferent  exemplar.  If  individualism  is  still  maintained  on 
such  a  basis,  it  must  deteriorate  to  the  wildest  egoism  and 
brutality,  and  finally  destroy  itself. 

But  neither  can  socialism  thrive  on  a  naturalistic  basis. 
Society  need  expect  no  favors  from  a  nature-mechanism 
which  grants  none  to  individuals  who  compose  society.  Here, 
too,  nothing  is  left  but  naked  selfishness.  In  the  last  analy- 
sis, whether  we  think  of  Comte's  religion  de  Vliumanit6  or 
Feuerbach's  homo  liomini  deus,  naturalistic  socialism  logically 
amounts  to  an  effort  to  exalt  man  to  the  empty  throne  of 
God. 

But  the  mission  of  man  is  to  be  neither  brute  nor  God, 
but  to  become  personality.^  But  it  is  only  as  an  uncondition- 
ally worthful  member  of  an  unconditionally  worthful  reality 
that  he  becomes  personality.  He  becomes  a  world  of  his 
own,  which  yet  is  concealed  in  a  comprehensive  world-order. 
So  only  is  he  free  from  the  compulsion  of  nature-mechanism, 
his  freedom  rooted  in  law  indeed,  and,  conversely,  this  law 
his  freedom  because  it  is  his  innermost  essence.  So,  too,  in 
the  soil  of  the  good,  the  tree  of  personality  grows — grows; 
it  is  not  made  by  mechanical  action  of  forces  not  its  own. 
But  now  also  a  real  fellowship  is  possible.  Such  a  fellow- 
ship— in  this  Kant  said  definitive  truth — can  exist  only  when 
each  member  treats  the  other  as  also  self-end,  each  honorino- 
the  human  dignity  of  the  other.  But  whoever  becomes 
personality  reverences  personality  in  others.      It  is  only  in 

1  Cf.  Beowning's  "A  Death  in  the  Desert,"  11.  576-78: 

"  .  .  .  .  progress,  man's  distinctive  mark  alone, 
Not  God's,  and  not  the  beasts' :  God  is,  they  are, 
Man  partly  is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be." 


274    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

personality  that  we  reach  the  true  unity  of  individualism  and 
socialism — a  problem,  therefore,  to  be  solved  practically 
rather  than  theoretically.  By  so  much  as  the  individual  is 
personal,  he  does  not  isolate  himself  in  selfishness  from 
society,  nor  is  he  swallowed  up  in  society ;  the  more  personal 
he  is,  the  more  he  seeks  society ;  and  the  more  society  realizes 
its  own  essence,  the  more  does  it  promote  the  growth  of 
personality.'  When  one  takes  naturalism  seriously,  theoreti- 
cally or  practically,  one  attains  not  to  freedom  and  human 
dignity,  but  to  despotism  and  human  contempt.^  This  is 
illustrated  by  Hobbes,  on  the  theoretical  side ;  by  Napoleon, 
on  the  practical.  We  may  not  at  once  pluck  the  fruits  of 
idealism  and  dig  the  ground  from  under  the  tree. 

But  it  is  time  to  turn  our  face  to  the  future.  So  far  our 
point  has  been,  first,  to  disengage  our  eternal  values  from 
their  supernaturalistic  shell ;  to  conquer  the  exemption  of  the 
self,  grown  conscious  of  its  rights,  from  the  tyranny  of  history; 
to  make  room  for  freedom  and  development  as  against 
the  absolutism  of  ecclesiastical  positivism.  Secondly,  since 
the  modern  world  escaped  the  thraldom  of  the  old  static 
absolute  but  to  become  a  victim  of  the  fleeting  and  empty 
relativities  of  naturalism,  it  becomes  us  to  wage  war  upon 
this  new  front  also.  If  the  old  was  being  without  becoming, 
the  new  is  becoming  without  being,  true  being.  Disengaging 
becoming  from  naturalism,  we  find  the  possibility  of  truth 
and  goodness  through  becoming — the  possibility  of  person- 
ality in  which  there  is  an  eternal  and  absolute  moment. 
Thus  the  principle  of  development,  disengaged  from  its  natu- 
ralistic construction,  and  the  principle  of  personality  are 
complementary:  personality  being  end  and  not  means,  devel- 

iQn  the  one  hand,  Jesus  is  criticised  for  being  only  an  individualist;  on  the 
other,  for  being  socialist.  But  by  so  much  as  he  was  perfectly  personal,  by  so  much 
was  he  neither,  but  both— both  in  inner  unity. 

2  Here,  also,  extremes  meet,  and  naturalism  and  supernaturalism  combine  in  a 
despotism  under  which  personality  does  not  come  to  its  rights— a  despotism  against 
which  it  is  the  genius  of  the  whole  modern  world  to  rebel. 


Naturalistic  and  Religious  World-Views    275 

opment  being  means  and  not  end.  In  other  words,  super- 
naturalism  excludes  development — the  element  of  truth  in 
naturalism ;  naturalism  excludes  eternal  values — the  element 
of  truth  in  supernaturalism ;  science  requires  the  former, 
religion  the  latter.  We  can  have  eternal  values  without 
supernaturalism,  and  development  without  naturalism.  But 
can  we  have  eternal  values  and  development,  the  relative 
cause  of  evolution  and  the  absolute  worth  of  personality? 
In  this  light  our  further  problem  is  plain:  Does  the  idea  of 
development,  the  golden  mean  between  supernaturalism, 
which  absolutizes  a  given  form  of  the  manifestation  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  naturalism,  which  denies  absolute  values  in  prin- 
ciple, constitute  an  a  priori  impossibility  to  the  definitive 
significance  of  Jesus  in  history,  and  to  Weinel's  striking 
phrase,  "After  Jesus  it  is  his  religion  or  none"?  But,  then, 
who  was  Jesus,  and  what  was  his  religion?  It  is  to  this 
question  we  must  next  turn. 


PAKT  II 

THE  FINALITY  OF  CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  IDEA 
OF  DEVELOPMENT 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  ESSENCE  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION:  THE 
PROBLEM  OF  METHOD 

One  must  know  what  Christianity  is  before  one  can  pro- 
nounce upon  its  finality.  The  question  as  to  what  constitutes 
its  essence  is  thus  raised.  But  an  inquiry  into  its  essence 
presupposes  a  decision  as  to  the  method  by  which  such  a  task 
may  be  successfully  accomplished.  Is  there  an  objective, 
unitary,  clear  norm  or  criterion,  whose  normative  validity 
reposes  in  good  and  sufficient  reasons,  in  accordance  with 
which  the  fixation  of  the  genuine  essence  of  the  Christian 
religion  may  be  consummated?  This  important  question 
must  first  engage  our  attention. 

1.  Time  was  when  the  problem  did  not  exist.  There  was 
no  debate  concerning  methodic  procedure,  because  the  con- 
cept "essence  of  Christianity"  had  not  arisen.  And  it  had 
not  arisen  because  there  was  no  need  for  it.  Catholic  the- 
ology, if  there  had  never  been  any  other,  would  never  have 
used  it.  It  would  have  spoken  familiarly  and  uncritically  of 
"the  faith  of  the  church."  If  it  made  any  distinction  at  all, 
it  would  have  been  between  the  full  clerical  knowledgfe  of 
the  priests  and  the  imperfect  knowledge  implicit  in  the  faith 
of  the  laity ;  but  it  would  not  have  meant  to  imply  thereby 
that  the  former  was  essence,  and  that  the  latter  was  not. 

But  since  the  origin  of  the  Protestant  type  of  Christian- 
ity, since  the  rise  of  the  Protestant  theology,  the  rise  of  our 
problem  also  was  inevitable.  Still,  it  was  not  "essence"  that 
was  at  first  fixed,  but  "Catholic  principle"  and  "Protestant 
principle"  that  were  discriminated  and  set  over  against  each 
other.  It  may  be  said  that  the  question  of  essence  is  con- 
tinuous with  that  old  controversy;  still  its  present  form  is 

279 


280    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

not  due  to  that  controversy  so  much  as  to  the  rise  of  modern 
evolutionism  and  of  the  historico-critical  science  of  history 
of  which  the  former  is  methodic  presupposition.  In  this  new 
situation  the  Catholic  theoloc^ian  has  not  been  able  to  remain 
oblivious  to  the  problem.  But  the  question,  What  is  Chris- 
tianity ?  has  not  been  so  embarrassing  to  him  as  to  the  Prot- 
estant theologian,  since  he  was  in  possession  of  a  sure  and 
clear  norm  by  means  of  which  he  might  test  the  phenomena. 
He  at  once  points — it  was  not  open  to  him  consistently  to  do 
otherwise — to  ilie  doctrine  of  his  church,  as  it  had  been  fixed 
by  the  organs  whose  function  it  was ;  that  is,  by  the  ecumeni- 
cal councils  and  the  pope.  He  dogmatically  assumes  that  the 
bishops  in  council  assembled  are  the  legitimate  official  suc- 
cessors of  the  apostles ;  that  the  bishop  of  Rome  is  the  legiti- 
mate official  successor  of  Peter,  the  head  of  the  apostles ;  that 
these  officers  in  session — in  the  last  analysis,  the  Roman 
bishop  himself,  that  is,  the  pope — may  be  unquestionably 
trusted  to  give  an  infallible  expression  of  genuine  apostolic 
tradition;  and,  finally,  that  such  tradition  is  inerrant  because 
it  is  the  Word  of  God.  Should  doubt  arise  as  to  the  source 
or  meaning  of  the  official  church  doctrine,  the  pope  could 
infallibly  adjudicate  in  reference  to  the  authenticity  or  sig- 
nificance of  the  point  in  doubt. 

Detailed  criticism  of  this  Catholic  method  may  be  omitted 
in  this  connection,  since  this  procedure  is  but  a  part  of  that 
Catholic  system  of  authority  which  has  been  examined 
already.  In  a  summary  fashion,  it  may  be  simply  pointed  out 
that  this  fixed  authority  and  distinct  norm,  of  whose  prac- 
tical value  Catholics  boast,  are  not  reliably  grounded.  The 
assertion  that  pope  and  bishops  are  such  successors  of  the 
apostles,  and  that  by  virtue  of  their  office  they  are  bearers 
and  promulgators  in  a  miraculous  way  of  an  apostolic  tradi- 
tion, has  not  been  proved  to  critical  minds,  who  do  not  offer 
blind  obedience,  but  demand  good  reasons.     But  historical 


The  Problem  of  Method  281 

experience  rather  testifies  against  the  correctness  of  the 
assertion.  It  shows  that  the  official  organs  of  the  Catholic 
church  have  originated,  at  all  events  sanctioned,  manifest 
and  essential  deviations  of  Catholic  Christianity  from  that 
Christianity  which  an  objective  and  impartial  examination  of 
the  oldest  sources  discovers  to  have  been  the  most  orio^inal. 
The  official  doctrinal  declarations  of  the  Catholic  church 
afford  a  sure  norm  only  for  the  fixation  of  that  which  is 
Catholic  Christianity;  but  it  offers  no  guarantee  that  Catholic 
Christianity  is  genuine  Christianity. 

2,  As  the  old  discussion  of  the  essence  of  Christianity  in 
the  form  of  "principles"  of  Christianity  did  not  arise  prior 
to  the  opposition  of  Catholic  and  Protestant,  so,  within 
Protestantism,  orthodoxy  would  never  have  used  the  phrase 
^'essence  of  Christianity,"  had  it  not  been  for  heterodox 
deviations.  It  would  have  said  "revelation  of  the  Bible," 
and  distinguished  in  addition  fundamental  and  non-funda- 
mental articles.^  According  to  this  position,  the  decisive 
norm  for  all  Christian  doctrine — which  is  the  essence  of 
Christianity — is  the  Sacred  Scripture.  Of  this  matter  also 
the  necessity  for  detailed  discussion  has  been  superseded  by 
our  previous  critique  of  Protestant  authority-religion.  The 
assertion  that  Sacred  Scripture  as  a  whole  is  the  norm  of 
genuine  Christianity  is  not  in  accord  with  the  original 
"Protestant  principle  of  Scripture,"  which  was  moral  and 
not  statutory;  nor  is  it  true  philosophically  or  helpful  practi- 
cally. The  elder  dogmaticians  taught  that  perspicuity  was 
an  attribute  of  the  Scriptures.  Under  the  circumstances, 
the  reason  for  their  doing  so  is  historically  evident  and 
not  without  justification.  The  clearness  of  the  Scriptures 
obviated  every  necessity  to  resort  to  an  interpretative  author- 
ity such  as  Catholicism  had,  and  was  thus  a  justification  of 

1  The  reader  will  notice  once  yet  again  the  intellectualism  common  to  Catholic 
and  Protestant  orthodoxy,  according  to  which  the  essence  of  revelation  is  doctrine; 
and  of  faith,  knowledge. 


282    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 


Protestant  independence.  But  after  centuries  of  both  con- 
fessional and  scientific  interpretation,  scriptural  difficulties 
and  obscurities  do  not  cease  to  abound ;  conclusions  among 
investigators  are  discouragingly  divergent;  we  are  very  far 
from  the  ideal  of  a  perfectly  sure  understanding  of  the  whole 
content  of  Scripture.  Besides,  since  an  equipment  of  great 
learning  and  ability  is  indispensable  to  the  understanding  of 
the  Bible,  the  peril  incident  to  the  use  of  this  criterion  is 
that  the  Protestant  autonomy  of  the  Christian  spirit  shall 
suffer  shipwreck — that  the  old  distinction  between  clergy 
and  laity  shall  be  revived  under  the  form  of  the  biblical  sci- 
entist and  the  student,  and  that  the  external  authority  of  the 
scholar  shall  simply  be  substituted  for  that  of  the  priest — 
a  questionable  substitution  from  the  standpoint  of  religion. 
Thus  we  should  have  deteriorated  to  a  stage  already  over- 
come in  the  world-historical  development — the  stage  where 
relicjion  was  conceived  as  knowleda^e  and  technical  skill  to  be 
taught  and  learned,  and  not  as  a  life  to  be  experienced. 

But  the  difficulty  as  to  the  normative  employment  of  the 
Scriptures  as  a  whole,  for  the  purpose  under  consideration, 
does  not  depend  simply  upon  our  distance  from  the  ideal  of 
complete  scriptural  knowledge,  nor  upon  the  fact  that  in  all 
human  probability  the  ideal  will  never  be  entirely  attained, 
but  also  upon  the  absence  of  a  unitary  point  of  view  of  the 
Scriptures  treated  as  a  homogeneous  whole.  The  elder  dog- 
matician  found  the  end  in  the  beginning,  the  New  Testament 
content  in  the  Old ;  but  the  facts  do  not  justify  this  presuppo- 
sition. Different  parts  of  the  Scriptures  contain  different 
kinds  of  religious  ideas,  which  do  not  admit  of  inner  combi- 
nation nor  of  reduction  to  a  common  denominator.  The 
discipline  of  biblical  theology  of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testa- 
ments has  made  this  fact  manifest.  It  seems  to  be  true  that 
one  and  the  same  author  has  expressed  specifically  different 
thoughts  which  nullify  each  other.     Grranted  these  different 


The  Problem  of  Method  283 

sets  of  thoughts,  then,  which  do  not  admit  of  simple  combina- 
tion to  an  harmonious  unity,  how  can  the  Scriptures  as  a 
whole  be  a  fixed,  unitary,  clear  norm?  How  is  one  to  know 
that  this  circle  of  ideas  is  more  important  and  decisive  than 
that?  If  it  be  said  that  the  different  sets  of  ideas  are  to 
be  gradedly  articulated  into  an  order  of  historical  develop- 
ment, how  is  one  to  know  which  set  comes  first,  and  what 
right  have  we  to  posit  such  distinctions  in  a  (by  hypothesis) 
distinctionless  Sacred  Scripture  normative  as  a  whole  for 
the  determination  of  what  is  Christian  and  what  is  not? 
To  effect  this  distinction  without  caprice  one  must  have 
recourse  to  a  higher  norm,  which  in  turn  would  have  to 
regulate  our  employment  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures.  Is  there 
such  norm? 

The  Catholic  finds  it  in  the  dogma  of  his  church.  Ever 
recognizing  theoretically  the  normative  importance  of  the 
Sacred  Scriptures,  he  has  made  it  practically  inoperative  by 
considering  ecclesiastical  dogma  as  regulative  principle  of 
scriptural  interpretation.  But  the  Protestant  finds  that 
higher  norm  in  a  specific  doctrine  borrowed  from  the  Bible — 
the  Pauline  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith.  This  becomes 
the  most  important  principle  for  the  interpretation  and 
employment  of  the  manifold  content  of  Scripture.  But  this 
certainty  is  not  itself  deducible  simply  from  the  principle  of 
Scriptures  in  general.  Measured  by  the  principle  that  the 
Scriptures  as  a  ivhole  are  to  be  directly  the  norm  of  Chris- 
tian doctrine,  this  special  discrimination  in  favor  of  Paul 
seems  to  be  arbitrary.  Large  place  as  the  Pauline  doctrine 
occupies  in  the  New  Testament,  is  it  identical  with  the  entire 
biblical  teaching,  and,  accordingly,  the  sole  decisive  doc- 
trinal norm?  The  Scriptures  as  a  whole  being  norm,  on  the 
pretext  of  an  appeal  to  their  authority,  what  is  there  to 
hinder  the  exaltation  of  other  ideas  above  Paul's,  or  the 
ideals  and  views  of  the  Old  Testament  above  the  New  ?    The 


284    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

pietistic  preference  for  Chiliasm,  decorated  with  Old  Testa- 
ment predictions,  is  a  distinct  witness  to  this  danger. 

Thus  the  untenability  and  impracticability  of  the  norma- 
tive validity  of  the  Scriptures  as  a  whole  become  apparent. 
And  if  the  validation  of  the  norm  be  sought  by  assuming 
the  miraculous  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures,  the  futility  of 
such  a  makeshift  has  been  already  sufficiently  considered  in 
a  former  connection. 

But  if  the  principle  of  Scripture  has  thus  no  universal 
validity,  may  it  have  a  limited  validity?  Much  is  loosely 
said  today  by  way  of  distinction  between  "Sacred  Scripture" 
and  "Word  of  God"  in  Sacred  Scripture;  between  "letter" 
of  the  Bible  and  its  "spirit;"  between  the  natural,  historically 
conditioned,  "human  element"  in  the  Bible  and  the  divine 
revelation  in  it.  •  This  latter,  it  is  said,  is  the  content  and 
not  the  form.  And  this  revelation  in  Sacred  Scripture  has 
historically  developed.  Therefore  one  cannot  expect  to  find 
the  whole  truth  at  the  lower,  earlier  stages,  but  only  at  the 
last.  Reofulative  norm  of  the  Christian  religion  is,  there- 
fore,  the  biblical  revelation  at  the  highest  stage  of  its 
development. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  a  distinction  of  this  kind  with 
reference  to  the  Sacred  Scriptures  is  to  be  made,  that  there 
is  general  agreement  that  it  shall  be  made.  But  as  soon  as 
we  go  about  the  practical  matter  of  actually  making  it,  we 
find  that,  provisionally  at  least,  this  agreement  exists  only 
in  so  far  as  that  distinction  in  its  abstract  universaliiy  is 
required.  When  it  comes  to  the  actual  designation  of  what 
is  to  be  counted  as  letter  and  what  is  spirit;  what  as 
unessential,  historically  conditioned,  "human,"  and  what 
as  essential  and  divine;  what  belongs  to  the  imperfect  pre- 
liminary stages  of  revelation  and  what  to  the  perfect  revela- 
tion; the  different  theological  tendencies  of  Protestantism 
and    the    views   of    different    evangelical   theologians    grow 


The  Problem  of  Method  285 


widely  divergent.  This  divergence  points  to  the  need  of  a 
fixed  principle  for  the  prosecution  of  the  distinction  in 
question;  otherwise  appeal  to  the  word  of  Scripture  but 
opens  the  door  again  to  subjective  caprice,  to  misunderstand- 
ings, and  to  unavailing  controversies. 

In  this  emergency  some  theologians  think  that  we  have 
an  admonition  to  recognize  an  ecclesiastical  confession  as 
ultimate  norm  in  accordance  with  which  one  should  choose 
from  the  Sacred  Scriptures  what  seems  to  one  to  be  the  true 
revelation.  But  to  occupy  this  confessionalistic  standpoint  is 
but  to  escape  one  difficulty  by  getting  into  another.  Let  U3 
suppose  now  that  an  ecclesiastical  confession  is  the  correct 
criterion  for  the  interpretation  and  use  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures.  Which  confession?  And  what  is  the  norm  for 
the  interpretation  and  employment  of  the  confessions  ?  There 
is  no  inner  harmony  in  any  of  them.  Besides,  the  distinction 
between  the  essential  and  unessential,  the  transitory  and  the 
permanent,  in  the  confession  is  no  less  necessary  than  in  the 
Bible.  Or  shall  we  substitute  a  distinctionless  confession 
for  a  distinctionless  Bible?  There  is  no  escape  from  sub- 
jectivism in  this  direction  either.  Besides,  the  adoption 
of  a  confessionalistic  principle  would  be  tantamount  to  a 
regress  from  the  truly  Protestant  standpoint  to  that  of  the 
Catholic.  For  the  error  is  not  that  the  confessional  decision 
is  Catholic  instead  of  Protestant ;  it  is  in  erecting  confession 
into  a  test  at  all. 

Are  there  other  possibilities?  The  Sacred  Scriptures 
contain  "saving  truths,"'  immediately  experienced  by  the- 
individual  Christian  and  the  Christian  community.  May 
this  experience  give  the  decision  as  to  how  far  the  content  of 
Scripture  is  an  authority  for  faith?  At  all  events,  it  is 
certain  that  only  experience  can  give  a  correct  answer  to  the 
question  as  to  the  "saving  truths"  of  the  content  of  Sacred 

1  The  phrase  is  not  a  good  one,  since  it  does  not  properly  designate  the  reality 
that  saves. 


286    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Scripture — that  experience  in  which  we  perceive  that  what 
is  authenticated  to  us  by  the  Scriptures  is  not  something 
merely  imagined,  or  merely  in  the  past  historically,  but  a 
redeeming  power  working  upon  us  in  the  present.  But  we 
must  sharply  distinguish  the  question  of  the  truih  of  the 
Christian  religion  from  the  question  of  the  essence  of  the 
Christian  religion.  The  Christian  as  such  is  convinced  that 
genuine  Christianity  is  the  full  truth  and  has  supreme  sav- 
ing value;  just  on  account  of  this  conviction  is  he  Christian. 
But  the  ripe  evangelical  Christian,  especially  the  Christian 
theologian,  must  examine  the  right  appertaining  to  this 
conviction  in  order  to  be  distinctly  conscious  that  it  has  good 
grounds.  If  he  will  conduct  his  examination  in  an  unpreju- 
diced manner,  he  may  not  assume  that  all  that  and  only  that 
which  authenticates  itself  to  him  and  to  other  Christians  in 
the  Bible  as  "saving  truth"  constitutes  genuine  Christianity. 
But,  apart  from  the  question  of  truth,  he  must  seek  to 
establish,  according  to  an  objective  norm,  what  the  authentic 
essence  of  Christianity  is — and  he  must  do  this  in  the  same 
scientific  manner  in  which  he  would  seek  to  know  the  gen- 
uine essence  of  any  other  religion. 

3.  More  recent  conceptions  now  remain  to  be  considered. 
Why  should  it  occur  to  us  to  have  recourse  to  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  as  decisive  norm  of  the  authenticity  of  Chris- 
tianity? Once  the  worth  of  Scripture  was  supposed  to  rest 
upon  its  inspiration.  But  this  idea  has  suffered  irretrievable 
collapse.  Is  there,  then,  some  self-evident  reason  why  the 
Scriptures  should  have  special  value  to  him  who  seeks  to 
know  the  genuine  essence  of  the  Christian  religion?  The 
answer  is  given,  e.  g.,  by  Wendt,  that  they  offer  a  collection 
of  sources  which  are  connected  with  the  historical  beginning 
of  the  Christian  religion.  It  is  granted  that,  since  these 
"sources"  and  the  whole  Bible  are  not  coincident,  the  latter 
as  such  does  not  have  the  requisite  normative  validity.      It  is 


The  Peoblem  of  Method  287 

also  granted  that  these  "sources"  themselves  are  not  the 
beginning  of  Christianity.  It  is  further  set  forth  that  the 
apostolic  proclamation  does  not  itself  constitute  the  historical 
beginnings  in  question.  The  thesis  is  that  the  religious 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  constitutes  the  historical  beojinninof 
of  Christianity,  that  the  so-called  sources  contain  this  teach- 
ing, and  that  the  historical  beginning  of  Christianity  is  the 
decisive  norm  for  the  determination  of  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  not  meant  that  the  teaching  of  Jesus  is  simply 
to  be  taken  into  account ;  it  is  meant  that  this  teaching  is  the 
sole  correct,  directly  regulative  norm  of  the  Christian  religion. 
This  view  has  the  merit  of  freedom  from  the  trammels  of 
the  inspiration  dogma,  without  sacrificing  the  objectivity 
which  that  dogma  is  designed  to  safeguard.  It  avoids  the 
caprice  of  individualistic  subjectivism  from  which  the  appeal 
to  experience  is  hardly  ever  exempt.  It  is  historical  as 
against  the  Aufkldruncj  which,  with  Locke,  speaks  of  the 
rationality  of  Christianity  and  rationalizes  the  Bible;  as 
against  the  Hegelian  speculation  which  aims  at  an  ideal 
construction  or  a  derivation  from  the  universal  concept  of 
religion.^  Systematic  deduction  yields  here  to  the  empirical 
and  inductive  method.  On  the  scientific  side,  the  position 
will  command  the  sympathy  of  those  who  maintain  that 
Christianity  as  an  historical  magnitude  is,  like  every  other 
religion,  a  fit  subject  for  religio- historical  investigation,  and 
that  there  is  no  other  method  for  the  investigation  of  Chris- 
tianity than  the  historico-critical  method  in  general,  and  no 
other  qualifications  necessary  than  those  of  the  religious 
historian  in  general.      On  the  religious  side,  this  judgment 

1  "But  the  point  of  view  of  the  philosophical  theorist,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word,  will  also  fiud  no  place  in  these  lectures.  Had  they  been  delivered  sixty  years 
ago,  it  would  have  been  our  endeavor  to  try  to  arrive  by  speculative  reasoning  at 
some  general  conception  of  religion,  and  then  to  define  the  Christian  religion  accord- 
ingly. But  we  have  rightly  become  skeptical  about  the  value  of  this  procedure. 
Latet  dolus  in  generalibus.  Wo  know  today  ....  that  there  is  no  general  conception 
of  religion  to  which  actual  religions  are  related  simply  and  solely  as  species  to 
genus."— Haenack,  What  is  Christianity?    pp.  8,  9;  Das  Wesen,  1st  ed.,  pp.  5,  6. 


288    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

concerning  the  normative  importance  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
seems  to  correspond  to  the  peculiar  appreciation  which  Jesus 
as  the  founder  of  the  Christian  religion  experiences  from  its 
adherents.  Moreover,  the  tacit  assumption  that  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  is  spread  before  us  in  such  historical  clearness  and 
fulness  in  any  part  of  the  Bible  that  it  can  be  employed  as 
fixed  criterion  will  be  grateful  to  our  pious  veneration  for  the 
Book  that  has  nourished  and  edified  the  spiritual  life. 

But  are  we  on  firm  ground  here?  Is  it  a  universally 
valid  rule  that  the  teaching  of  the  founder  of  a  religfion  must 
be  regulative  for  the  fixation  of  the  genuine  essence  of  that 
religion?  Is  the  legislation  of  Moses,  e.  g.,  an  exclusive 
criterion  for  the  determination  of  the  essence  of  the  religion 
of  Israel?  Yet  it  would  seem  that  we  have  quite  the  same 
historical  right  to  honor  Moses  as  the  founder  of  the  Israeli- 
tish  religion  that  we  have  to  honor  Jesus  as  the  founder  of 
the  Christian  religion.  Moreover,  is  it  usually  true  that  the 
religious  ideas  of  the  founder  of  a  religion  are  deposited  in 
such  sure  historical  tradition,  and  in  such  clear  and  unitary 
order,  that  they  afford  a  solid  historical  basis  for  the  defini- 
tion of  the  essence  of  that  religion?  Is  it  so  in  the  case  of 
Jesus  himself?  By  what  alchemy  can  the  pure  gold  of  his 
teaching  be  released  from  the  totality  of  conviction  in  which 
it  is  implicated?  A  jury  of  scholars  competent  to  have  an 
opinion  on  the  subject  would  arrive  at  no  sure  and  unani- 
mous conclusion  as  to  what  Jesus  actually  said.  They  would 
not  agree  as  to  when  he  was  born,  or  where,  or  how  long  he 
lived,  or  how  long  he  taught,  or  when  he  died,  or  what  he 
said.  Besides,  if  the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion  con- 
sists in  the  body  of  teaching  of  its  founder,  thus  being  a 
book-religion,  it  would  seem  a  strange  providence  that  Jesus 
never  wrote  a  line,  and  never  commanded  anyone  else  to  do 
so,  and  never  manifested  any  anxiety  about  the  incorruptible 
perpetuity  of  his  "sound  doctrine."      Nor  must  it   be   for- 


The  Problem  of  Method  289 

gotten  that  elsewhere  the  beginnmg  of  any  form  of  life  is 
not  an  adequate  criterion  for  the  measurement  of  that  life  in 
its  perfection,  and  that  therefore  the  assumption  that  the 
contrary  is  true  in  the  Christian  religion  is  not  at  all  self- 
evident,  but  must  be  substantiated  as  an  exception  to  the 
rule.  Furthermore,  while  at  first  sight  it  may  seem  to  exalt 
Jesus  to  erect  his  teaching  into  a  sole  criterion  for  the 
purpose  in  question,  it  does  not  really  do  so,  since  such  a 
procedure  amounts  to  a  reduction  of  the  pleroma  of  his 
mighty  spirit  to  a  didactic  function.  Is  the  whole  body  an 
eye  or  a  tongue?  Is  the  intensive  wealth,  is  the  redemptive 
ethico-religious  energy  of  the  overmastering  personality  of 
the  Savior  coincident  with  the  sum  of  his  words  ?  One  can- 
not be  too  grateful  for  Harnack's  insight  at  this  point: 

We  must  not  be  content  to  stop  there  [with  Jesus  and  his 
teaching],  because  every  great  and  powerful  personality  reveals  a 
part  of  what  it  is  only  when  seen  in  those  whom  it  influences.  Nay, 
it  may  be  said  that  the  more  powerful  the  personality  which  a  man  •/ 

possesses,  and  the  more  he  takes  hold  of  the  inner  life  of  others, 
the  less  can  the  sum-total  of  what  he  is  be  known  only  by  what 
he  himself  says  and  does.  That  is  why  a  complete  answer  to  the 
question.  What  is  Christianity?  is  impossible  so  long  as  we  are 
restricted  to  Jesus  Christ's  teaching  alone.' 

There  are  two  other  considerations,  of  a  philosophic 
character,  which  constitute  weighty  objections  to  the  crite- 
rion under  criticism,  much  as  it  is  customary  to  decry  the 
introduction  of  speculative  ideas  into  the  problem.  For  one 
thinfj,  the  Christian  reliction  is  at  all  events  reliafion.  But 
religion  is  not  a  body  of  teaching,  however  noble,  but  some- 
thing far  more  intimate  and  personal.  To  be  sure,  there  is 
an  intellectual  element  in  religion,  integrally  there,  and  it 
expresses  itself  in  ideas,  doctrines,  confessions,  and  theol- 
ogies; but  it  is  not  the  only  element,  and  is  indeed  far  from 
being  the  main  one.     Primarily,  religion  is  a  feeling  and 

1  What  IS  Christianity  ?  p.  10;  Das  Wesen,  p.  6. 


290    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

force  of  life,  a  yearning  for  the  highest  good,  a  sense  of 
need  of  help  from  the  Strongest,  and  intimations  of  the 
Infinite  and  Eternal,  as  the  soul's  everlasting  portion.  If 
religion  consisted  of  religious  ideas,  those  of  Jesus  might  be 
the  true  touchstone  for  all  time.  His  ideas  might  be  the 
measure  of  the  correctness  of  other  ideas.  As  moral  teach- 
ing is  not  morality,  artistic  ideas  not  art,  and  patriotic  pre- 
cepts not  patriotism,  so  religious  teaching  is  not  the  whole 
of  religion.  If  religion  be  life,  then  life,  and  not  ideas,  is 
the  criterion  of  life;  and  to  measure  religious  life  by  reli- 
gious ideas  is  to  measure  the  whole  by  a  part.  What  is 
thus  true  in  general  is  true  also  of  the  Christian  religion. 
It  is  thus  evident  that  the  criterion  in  question  is  too  intel- 
lectualistic,  and  is  wholly  unadapted  to  determine  the  emo- 
tional and  volitional  elements  in  the  Christian  religion,  which 
yet  are  precisely  those  that  are  most  inalienable. 

Finally,  the  fixity  of  the  criterion  under  review,  and  the 
implied  stability  of  the  object  to  be  tested,  are  foreign  to  the 
modern  conception  of  reality — belong  indeed,  together  with 
the  pi-evious  norms,  to  the  old  view  of  the  world  in  general. 
Norms  arise,  grow,  and  change,  like  everything  else.  So 
does  religion.  The  teaching  of  Jesus  as  a  fixed  quantum, 
the  Christian  religion  as  a  static  entity — the  psychological 
and  philosophical  criticism  of  this  conception  can  be  supplied 
by  anyone  who  has  read  the  preceding  chapters.  Popular 
as  the  word  "essence"  now  is,  much  as  we  may  be  unable  to 
hit  upon  a  better  designation,  it  is  yet  a  bad  word.  It  is  a 
survival  of  the  mediaeval  conception  of  substance  and  attri- 
bute —  a  fixed  and  self-identical  core  with  properties.  The 
task  of  determining  the  essence  of  a  thing  consisted,  accord- 
ingly, in  reaching  the  former  by  subtracting  the  latter,  much 
as  one  might  arrive  at  the  substance  of  a  flower  by  pulling 
off  the  petals  and  stamen  one  by  one.  The  impossibility  of 
arriving  at  the  ontological  by  alienating  the  phenomenal  at 


The  Problem  of  Method  291 


length  grew  manifest.  Next,  effort  was  made  to  define  the 
essence  of  a  thing  as  the  sum  of  its  attributes  and  the  form 
of  their  synthesis.  But  this  led  to  the  distinction  between 
primary  and  secondary  qualities ;  to  the  conception  at  first  of 
the  former  only  as  belonging  to  the  object,  the  latter  to  the 
subject;  afterward,  of  the  phenomenal  character  of  all  the 
attributes ;  finally,  to  the  unknowability  of  the  thing  in  itself; 
that  is,  the  essence.  It  is  on  account  of  this  fate  of  the  old 
category  that  one  cannot  avoid  misgivings  when  one  speaks 
of  the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion.  Besides,  in  a  former 
chapter  we  saw  that  the  idea  of  a  static  substance  has  been 
succeeded  by  that  of  process  with  "moments"  and  stages. 
And  it  is  admitted  on  all  sides  that  we  do  not  know  the 
ontological  constitution  of  this  process.  With  this  in  mind, 
it  would  seem  to  be  a  thankless  and  unilluminating  task  to 
inquire  after  the  essence  of  Christianity.  If,  like  all  reality, 
Christianity  is  process,  becoming,  life,  the  speculative-meta- 
physical inquiry  which  treated  it  as  an  existence  by  itself 
and  sought  to  define  what  it  is  must  be  replaced  by  a  histori- 
cal-psychological inquiry  into  how  it  came  about  and  what 
it  does.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  always  where  we  have  used 
more  than  mere  words  in  the  definition  of  a  phenomenon  we 
have  told  how  it  arose  and  what  it  did.  It  is  the  method  of 
this  larger  historical  inquiry  which  must  next  engage  our 
attention. 

4.  All  the  world  has  heard  of  Harnack's  Dos  Wesen  des 
CJiristenthums.  Many  men  say:  "We  believe  in  the  Essence 
of  the  Christian  Religion,  and  Harnack  is  its  prophet."  "I 
shall  employ  the  methods  of  historical  science ;  I  shall  hold 
myself  aloof  from  apologetics,  which  is  in  a  deplorable  state 
anyhow;  the  point  of  vie-^  of  the  philosophical  theorist  shall 
be  rigidly  excluded  also — life  cannot  be  spanned  by  general 
conceptions;  I  shall  keep  to  the  purely  historical  theme": 
such,  for  substance,  was  Harnack's  resolve.     He  sought  the 


292    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

essential  and  the  permanent  in  the  phenomena,  and  to  this 
end  he  traced  the  historic  fortunes  of  the  Christian  idea  from 
its  beginning  down  to  the  present  day.  No  apologetic  wiles, 
no  dogmatic  subtilties — only  historical  exposition,  simple, 
objective,  effective,  convincing.  Why,  then,  was  not  all  the 
world  convinced  by  this  masterpiece  of  the  world's  foremost 
church  historian?  One  party  says  that  Christianity  cannot 
be  known  by  critical  investigations  of  a  universal  historical 
character,  but  must  be  understood  from  the  Bible  alone, 
valued  as  revelation  and  Word  of  God.  Others  contest  the 
retirement  of  dogmas  effected  by  Harnack's  historical  exposi- 
tion, and  affirm  that  the  recognition  and  confirmation  of 
dogma  by  religious  experience  are  presupposition  of  histori- 
cal work.  Others,  again,  think  that  it  is  precisely  historical 
exposition  that  identifies  Christianity  with  the  cardinal 
dogmas  of  the  church,  and  that  proves  that  all  Christianity 
which  emancipates  itself  from  them  is  a  Christianity  of 
"halfness,"  of  decay,  of  dissolution.  These  judgments  are 
more  ecclesiastically  than  critically  determined.  But  there 
have  not  been  wanting  sober  historical  critics  also  who  deviate 
not  inconsiderably  from  Harnack's  apprehension  of  the  facts. 
One  with  him  in  presuppositions,  their  judgments  are  differ- 
ent from  his  as  to  the  conclusions  which  follow  from  these 
presuppositions.  In  their  opinion,  his  exposition  of  the 
preaching  of  Jesus  has  been  modernized  and  protestantized 
—  metamorphosed  into  the  ideals  of  an  ethic  applicable  to 
the  present  situation.  He  attaches  too  little  importance  to 
the  transcendence  of  Jesus'  God-idea,  to  his  expectation  of 
the  imminent  end  of  the  world,  and  to  that  in  his  ethic  which 
was  consequently  indifferent  to  the  world.  Such  critics  con- 
ceive the  relation  of  primitive  Christianity  and  the  preach- 
ing of  Jesus  to  the  later  development  of  Christianity  in  a 
way  different  from  that  of  Harnack.  They  are  less  inclined 
to  identify  so  intimately  the  conception  of  the  "essence"  with 


The  Problem  of  Method  293 

the  historical  primitive  form.  Many  feel  keenly  the  difficulty 
involved  in  identifying  a  "scientifically  reconstructed  primi- 
tive form"  of  Christianity  with  "Christianity  in  its  pure 
form,"  and  these  two  again  with  the  "absolute  and  perfect 
religion.'"  Pfleiderer  writes  sharply  of  the  difficulties." 

But  the  most  instructive  examination  of  Harnack's  book 
is  that  of  the  brilliant  liberal  Catholic  leader  and  critic, 
Alfred  Loisy.^  According  to  Harnack,  the  essence  must  be 
considered  above  all  else  as  the  standard  borrowed  from 
primitive    Christianity,    for  the    criticism   of  the    Catholic 

1  Adolph  JtJLiCHER,  Modeme  Meinuiigsverschiedenheiten  ilber  3Iethode,  Aufga- 
ben  und  Ziele  der  Kirchengeschichte  (1901),  pp.  3-9. 

2  "It  is  a  great  and  abiding  merit  of  the  scientific  theology  of  the  nineteenth 
century  that  it  has  learned  to  distinguish  between  the  Christ  of  faith  and  the  Jesus 
of  history,  these  having  been  identified  by  ecclesiastical  dogmatics.  Valuable  as  the 
attempt  is,  one  cannot  be  blind  to  the  fact,  however,  that  many  illusio)is  have  slipped 
in  with  reference  to  the  importance  of  the  results  gained.  As  soon  as  one  glances  at 
the  vast  Lehen  Jesu  literature,  the  question  arises  whether  these  attempts  to  get  at 
the  bottom  of  the  historical  reality  can  ever  yield  more  than  hypothetical  supposi- 
tions—whether they  do  not  leave  the  firm  ground  of  what  is  historically  attested  and 
ascend  into  the  region  of  ideal  poesy  in  just  the  degree  that  they  venture  to  paint 
more  concretely  the  picture  of  the  life  of  the  Founder.  One  will  be  scarcely  able  to 
keep  from  affirming  this  question  as  soon  as  one  observes  the  profound  differences 
between  the  supposed  historical  results  reached  by  the  different  Leben  Jesu  authors. 
And  why  should  we  expect  anything  else  when  we  reflect  that  the  oldest  narratives 
betray  the  most  unmistakable  traces  of  a  pervasion  of  the  historical  with  ideal  motives 
of  legend,  of  apologetic  argumentation,  and  of  dogmatic  speculation?  Jewish  proph- 
ecy, rabbinic  teaching,  oriental  gnosis,  and  Greek  philosophy  had  mixed  the  colors 
on  the  palette  from  which  the  portrait  of  Christ  in  the  New  Testament  was  painted. 
All  that  can  be  certainly  borrowed  from  these  writings,  therefore,  is  only  the  picture 
of  the  Christ  of  faith  of  the  primitive  communities  and  teachers.  To  this  must  be 
added  the  memorabilia  of  the  first  disciples,  the  kernel  of  crystallization  of  the  whole, 
yet  only  one  constituent  along  with  many  others.  The  question  as  to  how  much  of 
the  Christ  picture  of  the  New  Testament  is  to  be  credited  to  genuine  historical 
recollection,  and  how  much  is  to  be  referred  to  an  origin  elsewhere,  is  a  problem  that 
can  never  be  solved  with  full  certainty  ....  It  seems  to  be  an  axiom  today  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  essence  of  Christianity  stands  and  falls  with  the  exact  knowledge 
of  the  historical  person  of  its  Founder.  But  is  not  this  presupposition  another 
illusion'?  Does  it  not  end  in  signalizing  those  lineaments  which  are  agreeable  to  the 
present  style  of  thought  —  in  constructing  a  Christ  ideal  according  to  modern  taste? 
Who  does  not  know  the  series  of  Le6e)i>/esit  novels  ....  who  does  not  praise  Harnack's 
Das  WesendesChristenthums?  ....  We  must  guard  against  the  illusion  of  supposing 
that  such  a  Christ  picture  sketched  in  modern  style  is  the  result  of  scientific  histori- 
cal investigation  and  related  to  the  antique  Christ  picture  as  truth  to  error ! " 
— Das  Christusbild  des  urchristlichen  Glaubens  in  religionsgeschichtlicher  Beleuch- 
tung,  pp.  1-9. 

3  Alfred  Loisy,  V^vangile  et  f^glise  CParis:  Picard  et  Fils,  1902). 


294:    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

ecclesiastical  development.  Loisy  attacks  with  great  ability 
this  principiant  Protestant  supposition.  Harnack  refuses  to 
interpret  Catholicism  as  immediate  issue  of  the  gospel.  He 
finds  the  gospel  in  Protestantism  even  only  after  stripping 
off  the  Catholic  survival.  It  is  only  in  the  religiosity  of  the 
present  that  he  finds  the  kernel  of  the  primitive  gospel. 
Therefore,  says  Loisy,  he  protestantizes  and  modernizes  the 
gospel.  The  essence  of  the  gospel  is  in  the  ecclesiastical 
reality  empirically  unfolding  itself  throughout  the  mighty 
reaches  of  history.  Harnack's  loyal  prosecution  of  histori- 
cal study  in  the  use  of  the  historical  method  is  self-decep- 
tion, since  he  gives  us  only  his  own  subjective  predilection 
in  the  garb  of  history.'  Because  he  seeks  the  essence  one- 
sidedly  in  the  primitive  form  of  Christianity,  he  must  seek 
this  primitive  form  in  a  new  and  unitary  religious  idea.  The 
upshot  of  it  all  is  that  Harnack  has  to  hold  something  to  be 
the  essence  of  the  gospel  that  was  only  secondary  to  Jesus' 
mode  of  thought,  which  was  entirely  of  an  eschatological 
tendency.  To  Jesus,  the  essence  was  not  in  the  new,  but, 
for  the  most  part,  in  that  which  was  common  to  him 
and  Judaism.  The  essence  is  not  the  unchangeable  stability 
and  effect  of  that  simple,  new  idea,  in  the  face  of  the  fact 
that  nowhere  does  the  church  show  anything  that  is 
unchangeable.  Everything  is  in  constant  transformation  and 
appropriation,  as  was  the  case  with  the  preaching  of  Jesus 
itself.  The  gospel  is  throughout  a  complex  phenomenon, 
and  its  expression  in  the  church  is  complex,  living,  change- 
able— appointed  to  constant  regenerations  and  adaptations. 
Harnack's  conception  is  not  the  historical  picture  of  the 
thing  at  all,  but  a  radical  formula  of  individualistic  Prot- 
estantism, of  Protestantism  sundering  itself  from  the  collect- 
ive unity  of  the  church.  The  gospel  is  the  root  of  the 
church ;  the  church  is  the  living  and  inexhaustible  fruitage 

1  In  this  particular  judgmeut  Loofs  agrees  with  Loisy. 


The  Problem  of  Method  295 


of  the  gospel.  The  essence  is  the  actual  history  itself.  The 
church  and  gospel  in  every  particular  are  fluid  and  open 
magnitudes.  Therefore  the  unchangeable  essence  cannot  be 
construed  at  all,  but  lies  before  us  in  the  totality  of  the 
living  church  and  its  activities.     So  Loisy. 

And  so  the  battle  of  opinion  goes  on.  This  r^sum^  of 
scholarly  and  serious  opposition  to  Harnack's  book  has  been 
given  here  because  of  the  conclusion  to  which  it  points. 
Taken  all  together,  it  shows  that  "essence  of  Christianity" 
contains  difficult  and  unsolved  problems.  In  view  of  these 
diverse  judgments,  the  methodic  question  must  be  raised 
again  and  pursued  in  every  direction.  What  does  the 
expression  "essence  of  Christianity"  mean?  What  presup- 
positions does  the  search  for  the  essence  of  Christianity 
involve  ?  What  are  the  means  that  contribute  as  a  matter  of 
course  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  ?  Are  the  meaning  and 
aim  of  this  task  so  simple  and  self-evident  after  all?  Must 
the  task  be  set,  and  is  the  problem  soluble  ?  How  far  is  it  a 
really  historical  problem  ?  Is  the  historical-inductive  stand- 
point the  only  one,  or  are  there  other  means  at  our  disposal? 
If  so,  what  are  they?  These  questions  are  by  no  means 
merely  academic;  they  are  of  vital  practical  importance. 
The  fluctuating  judgments,  distressing  the  religious  world, 
are  partly  due  to  differences  concerning  these  methodic  pre- 
suppositions. An  examination  of  the  method  of  our  thought 
is  in  all  cases  of  complicated  problems  a  means  of  proper 
access  to  the  heart  of  the  matter  itself. 

5.  Instructed  by  this  exploitation  of  opinion,  guided  by 
these  pathfinders,  we  may  now  attempt  to  specify  and  to 
unify  all  the  factors  which  together  constitute  presupposition 
and  method  to  be  employed  in  answering  the  question :  What 
is  Christianity? 

a)  Since,  for  reasons  given,  neither  Catholic  nor  Protestant 
orthodoxy,  nor  even  Aufkldrung,   would  have  raised  this 


296    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

question,  the  necessity  for  our  doing  so  may  be  explained  at 
the  outset.  That  necessity  is  due  to  the  rise  of  the  conception 
of  historical  relativism.  It  is  historical  relativism  which  has 
ensued  upon  the  critical  dissolution  of  the  static  supernatural- 
ism  of  the  orthodoxies  and  finalities  of  the  church.  And  it 
is  historical  relativism  which  replaces  the  natural  right, 
natural  morality,  and  natural  religion  of  the  Avfkldrung  — 
in  each  of  which  there  was  a  survival  of  static  supernaturalism 
in  the  form  of  ready-made  innate  ideas  of  right,  morality, 
and  religion,  exempt  from  the  laws  of  time-progression. 
They  ivere  before  they  became,  according  to  this  rational- 
istic supernaturalism.  Now,  it  is  the  triumph  of  historical 
relativism  over  the  former  absolute  dogmatic  positivism,  of 
every  kind,  that  has  necessitated  the  query  as  to  the  perma- 
nent, the  eternal,  the  unchanging  in  Christianity,  since  the 
latter  can  no  longer  assert  dogmatically  its  exemption  from 
the  fate  of  all  the  rest  of  our  spiritual  possessions. 

The  historic  fortunes  of  the  Christ-concept  is  a  serious 
illustration  of  what  is  meant  here.  To  bes^in  with,  there 
was  the  Jewish  portrait  of  Christ.  His  first  disciples  greeted 
him  as  the  Jewish  Messiah ;  the  mighty  Lord  of  the  judg- 
ment day ;  the  restorer  of  Israel ;  the  supernatural  man  who 
held  the  sword  of  destruction  in  one  hand,  and  the  messaofe 
of  peace  and  of  pardon  in  the  other.  All  that  the  gloomy 
imagination  of  the  Jew,  with  his  fantasy  inflamed  from 
tribulation,  had  pictured  about  the  redeemer  of  the  chosen 
people,  was  transferred  to  Christ.  He  was  to  establish  the 
earthly  kingdom  of  God  in  the  blood  of  his  foe,  and  the 
faithful  were  to  reign  with  him.  He  is  at  once  mild  and 
terrible  —  the  Jewish  picture  of  Christ. 

A  century  goes  by.  The  gentiles,  won  by  indefatigable 
missionaries,  enter  in  vast  multitudes  into  the  Christian 
congregations.  Philosophers  leave  their  schools  to  be  bap- 
tized into  the  rising   church.      The   Greek  spirit,  entering 


The  Pkoblem  of  Method  297 

with  them,  represses  the  Jewish  spirit.  The  bloody  Messiah 
from  the  race  of  the  Maccabees  gradually  vanishes  from 
Christian  feeling.  Instead  of  him,  there  is  now  the  shining 
countenance  of  the  Word  of  God,  the  Logos.  The  tran- 
scendental mode  of  thought  of  Greek  philosophy  penetrates 
into  the  Christian  tradition,  and  henceforth,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
faithful,  Christ  is  the  perfectly  beautiful,  perfectly  pure,  per- 
fectly good  Being  in  whom  the  wisdom  of  God  became  flesh. 

Other  centuries  have  flown.  The  antique  world  is  nause- 
ated with  itself.  The  successors  of  the  mighty  peoples  of 
the  olden  times  are  aweary  of  life  and  impuissant.  They  fly 
to  the  wilderness  or  to  the  cloister.  The  joy  of  life  is  gone. 
Wisdom's  last  word  now  is :  Forego  fatherland,  family  enjoy- 
ment, and  the  duties  of  society.  Privation,  asceticism,  casti- 
gation,  voluntary  martyrdom,  mortification  of  the  flesh — 
this  is  now  the  ideal.  The  reign  of  the  monk  has  begun, 
and  slowly  the  shining  form  of  the  Greek  Christ  vanishes, 
while  the  sallow  countenance  of  the  oriental  Christ,  the 
Byzantine  Christ,  is  visible,  like  a  pale  moon,  on  the  horizon: 
the  gaze  into  emptiness,  dreamily  staring,  features  long- 
drawn,  the  body  emaciated,  cheeks  hollow — the  typical  idea 
of  the  monk  and  the  ascetic. 

Other  centuries  take  their  flight.  Incoming  German 
tribes  spread  the  veil  of  ignorance  and  rawness  over  all  Europe. 
The  sluggish  barbarian  blood  flows  in  the  veins  of  the  church. 
Darkness  settles  over  the  chaos  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
Greek  Christ  of  an  Origen  and  of  a  Chrysostom  no  longer 
speaks  to  the  peoples  of  the  eleventh  century.  They  are 
not  able  to  understand  him.  They  need  a  God  whom  they 
can  see  or  touch.  They  need  a  sensible  representation  of 
the  Savior.  The  priest  lifts  the  host  above  the  altar,  and 
the  Christ  that  can  be  sensibly  apprehended,  the  Christ  who 
imparts  himself  to  believers  by  letting  himself  be  eaten  by 
them,  becomes  visible  in  the  mass  of  the  Catholic  church. 


298    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Other  centuries  go  by.  Luther  and  Calvin  thunder.  In 
the  Renaissance,  old  Greeks  rise  from  the  dead.  The  Bible 
is  given  back  to  the  believer.  The  Christ  portrait  of  the 
Middle  Ages  is  given  up  by  a  part  of  Christendom.  Schools  of 
learning  are  founded.  Doctors  of  theology  take  the  place  of 
priests,  and  for  two  centuries  theological  warfare  is  the  order 
of  the  day  in  the  church  and  on  the  field  of  battle.  Nothing 
seems  so  important  as  the  confession  of  a  painfully  elaborated 
dogmatic.  Religion  has  fallen  back  into  the  quintessence 
of  scholasticism,  and  Christ  has  now  become  a  doctor  of 
theology,  a  cold  Christ,  exacting  obedience,  rationalistic, 
inexorable  toward  those  who  are  not  of  his  opinion,  trumpet- 
ing a  damnatory  judgment  upon  millions  of  human  beings 
who  have  not  accepted  his  dogmatics,  for  the  very  good 
reason  that  they  had  never  heard  tell  of  it. 

Still  more  time  flies;  and  meanwhile  a  few  philosophers 
lift  their  voices;  the  French  Revolution  shakes  the  world; 
historical  criticism  is  born;  the  Christ-concept  of  the  Prot- 
estant theologians  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  forsaken;  a 
new  Christ  portrait  arises — rather,  an  art  gallery  of  new 
Christ  portraits:  the  romantic  Christ,  the  socialistic  Christ, 
the  prophetic  Christ,  the  mystic  Christ,  the  rationalistic 
Christ,  the  idyllic  Christ.  It  is  an  instructive  fact  that  there 
have  never  been  so  many  different  conceptions  of  the  person 
of  Christ  as  since  the  time  when  historians  began  to  exhibit 
the  history  of  his  life!  And  at  present,  under  the  dominion 
of  individualism,  each  Christian  represents  to  himself  the 
personality  of  Christ  according  to  his  special  inclinations 
and  interests. 

To  the  historian  it  is  evident  that  each  of  these  portraits 
of  Jesus  is  historically  conditioned,  the  first  no  less  than  the 
last ;  that  each  is  what  it  is  because  the  ideals  of  life,  the  type 
of  piety,  and  the  view  of  the  world  in  general,  synchronous 
therewith,  are  what  they  are.      Each  is  relative  to  the  age 


The  Problem  op  Method  299 

from  whose  soil  it  sprang.  Thus  we  have  here  an  impressive 
illustration  of  that  historical  relativism  which  renders  our 
question  necessary.  For  we  instinctively  ask :  Which  one  of 
these  portraits  of  Christ  is  genuine?  Or  are  there  several 
equally  justified  concepts  of  the  Christ  ?  Or  are  we  all  the 
victim  of  illusion?  Amid  this  flux  of  the  relative,  is  there 
an  absolute?  Let  it  be  understood  also  that  the  historic 
diversity  of  the  underlying  religiosity  itself  is  quite  as  great 
as  that  of  the  ideas  of  the  Christ  which  serve  to  express  and 
realize  that  religiosity. 

But  if  one  examine  Christianity  in  its  contemporaneous 
forms  today,  one  will  be  led  to  the  same  conclusion  which 
was  reached  by  a  review  of  its  historic  stages.  What  does 
it  mean  that  adherents  of  occidental  Christianity  send  mis- 
sionaries to  the  devotees  of  oriental  Christianity?  What 
does  it  mean  that  confessional  opposition  is  so  sharp  and 
fundamental  that  one  confessor  will  hesitate  to  honor  a 
different  confessor  as  Christian?  How  much  is  common  to 
the  tendencies  and  parties  that  are  called  Christian?  And 
is  it  that  which  is  common  to  all — to  Occident  and  Orient; 
to  Greek,  Roman,  and  Protestant;  to  Orthodox,  Rational- 
ist, Pietist,  and  Humanist — that  is  the  really  Christian? 
What  is  it  that  shall  determine  the  answer?  It  is  said,  as 
we  have  seen,  that  primitive  Christianity — or,  more  defi- 
nitely, the  Christianity  of  Christ — must  constitute  the  cri- 
terion. But,  in  that  case,  what  if  there  are  no  Christians  any 
more?  Thus,  whether  one  looks  at  the  past  or  at  the  present, 
all  is  change,  all  is  relative,  all  is  conflict;  and  hence  one 
falls  into  doubt.  We  do  not  begin  life  with  doubt.  At  the 
beginning  of  life  whatever  is  is  valid  expression  of  reality. 
But  when  experience  discloses  to  us  contradictory  elements, 
when  what  was  reality  to  the  consciousness  of  one  age  ceases 
to  be  real  to  that  of  another,  then  doubt  arises,  and  the  ques- 
tion as  to  which  of  these  elements  possesses  the  true  reality, 


300    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

and  the  need  of  a  criterion  of  reality  or  validity,  are  awakened. 
This  is  true  for  religious  reality  as  for  all  else.  Had  Chris- 
tianity been  a  self -identical  entity,  in  every  age  homogeneous 
with  its  first  beginnings  down  to  empirical  details,  doubt 
would  never  have  arisen  as  to  what  it  was ;  it  would  have  been 
exempt  from  the  judgment  of  relativity,  and  the  quest  for 
norm  would  have  been  superfluous,  much  as  it  is  true  that 
worse  fates  than  these  would  in  that  event  have  overtaken 
the  new  religion.  But,  on  the  modern  supposition  of  histori- 
cal relativism,  doubt  was  inevitable,  and  the  task  of  deter- 
mining the  essence  could  not  but  be  set. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  one  hypothesis  upon  which  the  task 
would  be  unnecessary,  upon  which  the  problem  would  not 
even  arise.  If  essential  Christianity  and  empirical  Chris- 
tianity were  coincident  extensively  and  intensively;  if,  as 
Loisy  says,  the  essence  is  the  actual  history  itself,  such  would 
be  the  case.  But  there  are  two  considerations  that  weigh 
against  this  hypothesis:  first,  the  self-contradictory  elements 
in  Christian  history,  as  has  already  become  apparent;  and, 
secondly,  the  pervasion  of  the  historical  with  moral  evil. 
Instead  of  essential  Christianity  having  radical  error  and  evil 
as  inalienable  constituents,  it  must  be,  as  our  supreme  ethico- 
religious  value,  the  critical  touchstone  for  the  demarkation 
of  those  phenomena  which  proceed  from  the  pure  impulse  of 
the  essence,  from  those  other  phenomena  which  issue  from 
error  and  sin — from  obtuseness  and  triviality,  from  passion 
and  short-sightedness,  from  folly  and  malice,  and  from 
indifference  and  mere  worldly  sagacity.  Indeed,  our  whole 
purpose  in  seeking  a  true  conception  of  the  essential  in  our 
religion  is  that  we  may  be  able,  not  merely  to  ignore  the 
unessential,  but  also  to  escape  and  condemn  the  anti-essential. 

b)  Granting,  then,  the  need  of  setting  the  task  in  ques- 
tion, it  is  important  to  arrive  at  some  decision  as  to  what  the 
expression  itself,  "the  essence  of  Christianity,"  signifies. 


The  Problem  of  Method  301 

Professor  Troeltsch^  says  that  Chateaubriand,  in  his 
G&nie  du  Christianisme,  was  the  first  to  use  the  expression 
"essence  of  Christianity" — on  a  very  confused  historico- 
empirical  basis,  however.  The  expression  points,  then,  to  its 
source  in  the  historical  conception  and  art  of  romanticism, 
after  Lessing  and  Herder  had  sought  for  similar  concepts. 
The  men  of  German  idealism  and  German  romanticism,  and, 
since  then,  general  usage,  say  "Christendom." 

Troeltsch  continues : 

They  mean  thereby  the  whole  of  the  Christian  life,  understood 
in  the  fulness  of  its  historical  phenomena,  arising  out  of  an  impell- 
ing idea.  The  essence  of  Christianity  is  a  spiritual  unity  devel- 
oping itself  in  the  manifoldness  of  Christian  history,  a  unity 
of  which  the  majority  is  unconscious,  and  which  is  first   to  be 

apprehended  by   an   historical   abstraction The    expression 

signifies  therefore  the  application  of  a  methodic  fundamental 
thought  and  of  a  most  extensively  approved  presupposition  of 
modern  general  history.  The  development  of  an  idea,  of  a  value, 
of  a  circle  of  thought,  of  an  end,  is  a  great  coherent  complex.  Each 
of  these  grows  with  its  activity.  Each  develops  consequences. 
Each  appropriates  and  masters  foreign  material.  And  each  opposes 
constant  aberrations  from  the  main  direction  and  obtrusive  opposi- 
tions. The  essence  of  such  a  complex  is  the  abstract  concept,  the 
abstraction  peculiar  to  history,  hj  means  of  which  the  whole  known 
and  minutely  investigated  scope  of  coherent  formations  is  under- 
stood on  the  basis  of  an  impelling  and  self-developing  fundamental 
thought.  The  essence  can  be  found  only  by  a  survey  of  all  the 
phenomena  connected  with  this  thought.  Its  discovery  requires  the 
employment  of  historical  abstraction,  the  art  of  divination  which 
takes  in  the  whole  at  a  single  glance,  and  at  the  same  time  the 
exactness  and  fulness  of  the  methodically  elaborated  facts. 

Troeltsch  thus  gives  a  masterly  statement  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  expression  "essence,"  much  as  it  is  true  that 
he  mixes  it  up  with  the  discussion  of  the  methodic  procedure. 
It  is  apparent  that  he  is  continuous  with  the  German  ideal- 
ism which  created  the  concept.     There  is  a  sense  also  in 

I  Christliche  Welt,  1903,  No.  21. 


302    The  Finality  of  the  Chbistian  Religion 

which  modern  historical  science  has  simply  developed  that 
concept  further,  only  partially  absolving  it  from  its  special 
philosophical  presuppositions.  To  be  sure,  modern  history  — 
as  will  be  set  forth  more  fully  in  a  moment — is  prone  to  forego 
such  abstractions  as  all  too  difficult.  But  it  cannot  in  truth 
forego  them.  Such  abstractions  are  the  chief  aim  of  history, 
and  first  make  this  science  of  value.  It  is  only  through 
them — -intimately  connected,  of  course,  with  exact  detailed 
investigations — that  history  becomes  what  it  is  designed  to 
be — the  wider  experience  of  the  life  of  man,  the  orientation 
on  the  part  of  the  living  by  means  of  the  collective  experience 
of  the  life  of  the  race,  so  far  as  a  picture  of  that  life  can  be 
obtained. 

But  to  return.  We  mean  by  "essence  of  Christianity," 
then,  the  organizing  and  productive  principle  of  the  fulness 
of  that  phenomenon  of  life  which  we  call  Christianity.  The 
suggestion  which  we  gain  by  asking  analogous  questions  is 
helpful.  What  does  the  expression  '"essence  of  the  Renais- 
sance" signify?  Of  Greek  culture?  Roman  law?  Of 
Vedism,  or  Buddhism,  or  Islam?  Or,  perhaps,  a  more  illumi- 
nating question  would  be:  What  is  meant  by  the  "essence" 
of  the  English  language?  Is  it  to  be  found  in  that  which  is 
common  to  it  with  other  languages  ?  Is  its  essence  coincident 
with  the  primitive  form  of  that  language?  But  we  do  not 
speak  Old  English  any  more;  it  is  a  dead  language.  Is  the 
essence  a  fixed  sum  of  words  ?  But  it  is  precisely  the  words 
that  are  not  fixed,  old  ones  always  dropping  out,  new  ones 
coming  in,  and  those  that  remain  underg-oincr  chano;e  in 
pronunciation  and  meaning.  Is  the  essence  only  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  words?  But  the  words  of  Greek  and  Latin  origin 
have  been  anglicized,  and  seem  to  be  of  as  much  value  as 
any  others.  If  the  statement  that  the  essence  of  the  English 
language,  a  syncretistic  language,  is  our  language-speaking 
propensity  expressing  and  realizing  itself  in  a  specific  modi- 


The  Problem  of  Method  303 


fication  of  words  and  their  arrangements,  which  are  distin- 
guished by  well-known  marks  from  those  of  other  languages 
— if  this  statement  seem  mere  words,  it  yet  has  the  illus- 
trative importance  of  showing  that  essence  is  not  mere  idea, 
or  principle,  or  spirit — this  in  correction  of  Troeltsch — nor 
the  fulness  of  the  phenomenon  itself — this  against  Loisy; 
not  the  spirit,  or  principle,  or  idea  unexpressed,  and  not  the 
sum  of  its  expression,  but  the  spirit  plus  its  specific  form- 
making  tendency,  the  form  itself  being  ever  variable  and 
transitory.  Thus,  while  the  essence  of  Christianity,  a  syn- 
cretistic  religion,  is  a  "life,"  and  not  merely  dogma,  or  cult, 
or  institution,  it  is,  for  all  that,  a  life  to  which  it  structurally 
belongs  to  externalize  itself  in  these  three  ways,  much  as 
they  are  accident  and  not  essence — the  process,  but  not 
the  product,  of  externalization,  belonging  therefore  to  the 
essence.  But  this  threatens  to  transcend  the  bounds  of  the 
present  chapter. 

c)  The  presupposition  which  underlies  the  idea  of  essence 
is  the  vital  question  next  to  be  considered.  The  general 
methodic  presuppositions  of  modern  historical  thought  are 
transferred  to  the  study  of  Christianity.  What  constitutes 
modern  historical  thought?  It  involves  the  investigation  of 
facts,  but  presupposes  the  methodic  criticism  of  sources,  the 
reconstruction  of  facts  in  the  use  of  the  analogy  of  the 
human  experiences  with  which  we  are  psychologically  famil- 
iar, and  the  origination  of  a  causal  system  embracing  with- 
out exception  all  phenomena. 

If  it  is  the  methodic  cardinal  proposition  of  the  science  of  today 
that  we  have  to  explain  every  condition  as  the  causally  determined 
development  out  of  a  preceding  one,  this  excludes  on  principle  the 
appearance  of  any  condition,  event,  action,  or  personality  which  is 
not  explicable  out  of  the  preceding  conditions  and  according  to  the 
laws  of  genesis  in  general. ' 

IPFLEIDEEEE,  Evolution  and  Theology,  p.  9. 


304    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Thus,  the  historical  investigation  of  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity includes  a  series  of  presuppositions  of  the  most 
important  and  decisive  character. 

(1)  For  one  thing,  it  foregoes  the  old  dogmatic  historical 
science,  with  finished  standard.  It  does  not  appeal  to  a 
biblical  or  ecclesiastical  normative  truth,  authenticated  by 
divine  authorization.  Miracle  ceases  to  be  means  for  sepa- 
ration and  determination  of  the  essence,  for  the  isolation  of 
the  divine  and  essential  in  Christianity.  But  the  normative 
validity  of  the  tradition,  hitherto  safeguarded  by  miracle, 
vanishes  with  the  abandonment  of  miracle  as  a  means  to  the 
end  of  knowing  the  Christian  essence.  Likewise,  the  way  is 
open  then  for  the  free  criticism  of  the  ecclesiastical  dogma 
given  with  the  tradition  or  grown  out  of  it.  Criticism  loses 
its  peculiar  logical  opponent;  that  is,  criticism  and  miracle 
are  mutually  exclusive.  The  investigation  of  the  essence 
may  explain  these  dogmas,  no  longer  identified  with  the 
essence,  in  a  historico-psychological  manner  as  arising  from 
the  spiritual  process  itself.  It  may  even  consider  the  criti- 
cism and  dissolution  of  these  dogmas  as  a  part  of  the  move- 
ment of  the  essence.  And  it  may  characterize  new  formations 
as  an  outflow  of  the  essence  itself.  But  the  criticism  with 
which  this  chapter  began  sufficed  to  show  that  the  determi- 
nation of  essence  was  not  restricted  to  miracle,  nor  to  the 
church  and  the  authority  of  the  church.  Such  dogmatic 
procedure  is  now  discredited. 

(2)  But,  for  another  thing,  any  exposure  of  the  essence 
by  identifying  the  idea  of  Christianity  with  the  truth  of 
natural  religion,  or  with  a  universal  concept  of  religion,  or 
with  universal  ethico-religious  postulates,  is  to  be  rejected. 
Of  all  these  things  historical  science  knows  nothing.  The 
freedom  of  the  science  would  be  abridged  by  the  blind 
adoption  of  these  categories  which  it  did  not  originate  and 
cannot    control.     Besides,    the    essential    thing    in    Chris- 


The  Pkoblem  of  Method  305 

tianity — let  this  be  said  even  now — is  no  such  self-identical 
universality,  so  that  everything  not  coincident  therewith 
becomes  unessential.  But  the  essential  is  the  content  of 
the  religious  fundamental  reality  which  is  never  finished  and 
never  closed  so  long  as  it  is  living  and  belongs  to  history  — 
a  content  revealing  itself  in  its  historical  manifestation,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  determining  its  unfolding,  and 
central  in  its  own  thinking  and  willing.  Thus  both  a  super- 
natural and  natural  dogmatism  are  excluded  from  the  pre- 
suppositions of  our  task.  These,  whether  unchangeable 
orthodox  criteria  or  unchangeable  rational  truths,  are  dead 
entities,  and  we  may  not  seek  the  living  among  the  dead. 
The  essence  must  be  a  magnitude  wliich  possesses  inner 
vitality  and  mobility,  productive  powers  of  propagation.  It 
must  be  a  self-developing  spiritual  principle.* 

(3)  But,  still  further,  our  presupposition  may  not  be  what 
might  be  called  ortholinear  evolution.  It  is  granted,  with 
Pfleiderer,  that  all  reality  is  causally  interconnected ;  but,  all 
the  same,  history  is  not  nature;  and  the  creative  efficiency 
and  spontaneity  of  personality  must  be  taken  into  account 
when  we  form  our  conception  of  causation  in  the  historical 
region.  The  idea  of  causality  is  not  concerned  with  the 
necessity  of  a  phenomenon,  but  only  with  the  connection  of 
a  phenomenon  with  antecedent  phenomena.  Such  an  idea 
does  not  deny  novelty  and  originality  in  the  new  that  may 
arise.  And  room  must  be  made  for  regressions  and  aberra- 
tions, for  miscarriages  and  catastrophes,  for  caprice  and 
irrationality,  for  moral  weakness  and  moral  wrong ;  and  like- 
wise room  must  be  made  for  the  epoch-making  celerity  of 
progress,  for  the  genius,  for  the  great  and  characteristic,  for 
the  supremely  worthful,  under  conditions  of  cause  and  time. 

The  tendency  as  far  as  possible  to  reduce  everything  to  one 
level,  and  to  efface  what  is  special  and  individual,  may  spring  in 

'In  this  discussion  the  word  "principle"  is  never  used  in  antithesis  to  per- 
sonality.   The  exclusive  opposition  of  the  two  is  not  a  necessity  of  thought. 


306    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

some  minds  from  a  praiseworthy  sense  of  truth,  but  it  has  proved 
misleading.  More  frequently,  however,  we  get  the  habit,  conscious 
or  unconscious,  of  refusing  greatness  any  recognition  at  all,  and  of 
throwing  down  everything  that  is  exalted.' 

Causation  is  not  iron  necessity.  Perhaps  an  appeal  to  the 
practical  consequences  of  this  presupposition  may  be  as 
effective  a  way  as  any  of  exposing  its  unsatisfactoriness.  In 
the  first  place,  on  this  hypothesis  all  the  formations  of  Chris- 
tianity must  be  considered  as  causally  necessary  revelations 
of  the  essence  of  Christianity,  and  not  only  causally,  but 
teleologically  necessary  as  well — each  necessary  in  its  place 
even  in  every  item  of  its  most  concrete  and  motley  manifold- 
ness.  But  in  that  case  the  essence  of  the  process  could  not 
be  rationally  erected  into  a  criterion  of  criticism  and  correc- 
tion of  particular  stages  of  the  development;  that  is,  of  one- 
sidednesses  and  injurious  accretions,  for  example.  Our 
Protestant  conviction  especially  would  protest  against  the 
application  of  such  a  presupposition  as  the  one  in  question. 
We  cannot  consider  the  whole  of  Catholicism  as  the  teleo- 
logically necessary,  organic  unfolding  of  the  Christian 
essence.  On  such  apprehension.  Protestantism  would  be 
impossible.  With  all  historical  righteousness  toward  Catholi- 
cism, with  full  recognition  of  the  fact  that  primitive  missions 
emptied  directly  into  Catholicism,  and  that  Protestantism 
has  Catholicism  as  its  presupposition,  it  is  still  true  that 
Protestantism  means  a  breach  with  the  fundamental  idea 
of  Catholicism.  In  any  event,  Protestantism  is  an  his- 
torical catastrophe  and  a  regress  to  forsaken  truths  of 
primitive  Christianity.  Thus,  whoever  shares  the  Prot- 
estant conception  of  Christianity  cannot  carry  out  the 
organic  evolution  theory.  But,  in  the  second  place,  a 
similar  remark  may  be  made  with  reference  to  the  appli- 
cation of  the  Christian  essence,  as  critical  principle,  to  extra- 
Christian  religions.     The  prosecution  of  Christian  missions 

1  Haenack,  op.  cit.,  p.  54. 


The  Problem  of  Method  307 

requires  such  service  of  the  essence  —  a  service,  however, 
that  would  be  meaningless  upon  this  theory  of  necessary- 
development.  Thus  the  essence  cannot  be  extracted  from 
each  item  of  the  whole  course  and  totality  of  phenomena. 
A  distinction  is  to  be  made  between  phenomena  and  phe- 
nomena— that  is,  between  such  phenomena  as  express  the 
essence  and  such  as  obscure,  or  pervert,  or  even  obliterate 
it.  And  the  concept  of  the  essence  is  not  merely  an  extrac- 
tion from  the  phenomena,  but  a  criticism  of  the  phenomena; 
and  this  criticism  is  not  merely  the  testing  of  the  incomplete 
by  the  ideal  at  work  in  it,  but  a  sundering  of  what  is  in 
accordance  with  the  essence  from  what  is  contrary  to  it. 

(4)  The  determination  of  the  essence  is,  at  all  events,  an 
historical  task;  whether  it  is  simply  and  only  an  historical 
task  depends  upon  the  scope  and  depth  which  one  may 
accord  to  the  historical  method.  Upon  this  important 
matter  we  must  now  reflect  patiently.  Scholars  are  no 
longer  so  sure  as  to  what  constitutes  the  historical  method 
as  they  were  a  generation  ago.  Before  we  enter  upon  the 
discussion,  a  general  observation  may  be  indulged  in. 
Method  is  the  decisive  feature  common  to  all  the  sciences. 
It  is  the  ethics  of  science,  so  to  speak.  As  the  way  by  which 
one  overcomes  his  sorrows — whether  by  drowning  them  in 
an  intoxicating  bowl  or  by  utilizing  them  in  living  faith — 
is  of  more  moral  importance  than  the  release  itself,  so  the 
method  by  which  one  gains  one's  results  is  of  more  scientific 
importance  than  the  results  gained.  In  the  exact  sciences 
we  observe,  describe,  explain.  Classification  is  simply  a 
labor-saving  device  in  the  interest  of  explanation — enabling 
us  to  explain  a  multitude  of  things  at  once  instead  of  having 
to  do  so  one  at  a  time.  It  has  been  customary  to  consider 
observation  and  description  as  means  simply  to  the  end  of 
explanation;  but  there  seems  to  be  a  reaction  today  in  the 
interest  of  ascribing  more  scientific  dignity  to  the  task  of 


308    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

observing  and  describing.  Particularly  is  this  true  as 
regards  historical  science.  Explanation  signifies  the  refer- 
ence of  the  phenomenon  to  be  explained  to  its  causal  ante- 
cedents, or  the  articulation  of  it  in  that  system  of  occurrences 
where  it  originally  belongs.  Without  doubt  this  is  the  crux 
of  demonstrative  science — it  supposes  the  interrelation  of 
all  reality  under  the  law  of  cause  and  effect;  that  is,  the 
principle  of  natural  causation,  which,  in  turn,  has  for  its 
presupposition  the  ultimate  unity  of  all  existence.  But, 
aside  from  observation,  description,  explanation,  the  human 
mind  is  constantly  engaged  in  another,  a  very  different,  kind 
of  activity,  viz.,  valuation,  appreciation,  estimation.  Our 
attitude  toward  reality  or  existence  is  not  merely  that  of 
perceiving  and  understanding;  reality  excites  our  feeling  so 
that  we  express  judgments  assigning  or  denying  it  worth. 
For  example,  we  observe  and  describe  a  rainbow,  numbering 
and  locating  its  colors;  we  also  explain  it  by  referring  the 
colors  to  the  refraction  of  light  by  drops  of  water;  but,  in 
addition  to  the  activity  of  perception  and  understanding,  as 
science  counts  understanding,  we  exclaim:  "The  rainbow  is 
beautiful!"  This  last  is  an  estimation  of  worth,  a  value- 
judgment,  and  it  has  its  source  in  a  side  of  our  nature 
different  from  the  former  activity  which  yields  the  existence- 
judgment.  Think  of  the  difference  between  the  attitude  of 
a  thirsty  man  to  water  and  that  of  the  scientist  or  the  artist 
as  such !  Of  special  significance  are  the  judgments  of  value 
which  we  pass  on  human  actions,  our  own  as  well  as  those 
of  other  men.  And  if  we  think  of  existence  as  a  whole,  and 
value  it  according  to  our  experience  of  weal  or  woe  from  it, 
we  pass  beyond  the  ethical  to  the  religious  appreciation. 
Now,  waiving  the  ultimate  question — the  problem  of  prob- 
lems— of  the  relation  between  cause  and  worth  or  value,  or 
between  existence-judgment  and  value-judgment,  or,  if  one 
please  to  state  the  same  thing  differently  still,  between  expla- 


The  Problem  of  Method  309 

nation  and  valuation,  it  is  evident  that  the  enactment  of  the 
latter  does  not  depend  upon  the  solution  of  the  former; 
that,  for  example,  the  judgment  that  the  rainbow  is  beautiful 
does  not  wait  upon  the  scientific  explanation  of  its  origin. 

With  these  general  remarks  in  mind,  we  may  return  to 
the  question  of  historical  method.  Is  the  historical  method 
descriptive,  or  explanatory,  or  teleological,  for  lack  of  a  better 
word  to  express  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  value-judgment 
science?  The  Windelband'-Rickert^  school  of  history 
designates  the  method  idiographic.  The  Dilthy-Wundt 
school^  designates  the  method  nomothetic — the  idiographic 
being  virtually  the  descriptive,  the  nomothetic  virtually  the 
explanatory.  There  remains  the  teleological — one  may  not 
be  misunderstood  if  one  calls  it  the  Carlyle  school,  the  great 
man-theory  of  history.  It  is  the  teleological  study  of  history 
for  moral  and  practical  purposes.  By  way  of  elucidation  it 
may  be  said  that  the  idiographic  method,  if  not  also  teleo- 
logical, is  a  direct  means  to  the  latter,  so  that  they  are  not 
sharply  discriminated,  and,  for  our  own  purpose,  may  be 
united.  Some  understanding,  now,  of  the  merits  of  this 
controversy  will  do  much  to  help  us  on  our  way.  According 
to  the  Windelband-Rickert  view,  natural  science  seeks,  as  the 
fruition  of  its  process,  universal  law;  but  historical  science, 
particular  facts.  In  the  language  of  formal  logic,  the  goal 
of  the  former  is  the  general,  apodictic  judgment;  that  of  the 
latter,  the  single  assertory  proposition.  The  distinction  con- 
cerns the  relation  between  the  universal  and  the  particular — 
recognized  since  Socrates  as  the  most  fundamental  fact  of 
all  scientific  thought.  Antique  metaphysics  divided  here  — 
Plato  seeking  the  Real  in  unchangeable  genera  or  concepts; 
Aristotle,  in  teleological  self -developing  individuals.    Modern 

^  Geschichte  und  Naturwissenschaft  (Strassburg,  1900). 

^Die  Grenzen  der  naturwissenschaftlichen  Begriffsbildung. 

3  See  Wundt's  Methodenlehre,  and,  for  brief  treatment,  his  Einleitung,  pp.  67  fif. 


310    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

natural  science  has  substituted  natural  law  for  the  Platonic 
idea.  Thus,  in  their  knowledge  of  reality,  empirical  sciences 
seek  either  the  universal  in  the  form  of  natural  law,  or  the 
individual  as  historically  determined;  either  the  ever  self- 
identical  form,  or  the  content  of  an  actual  occurrence,  viewed 
as  single  and  self-determined.  The  former  are  law-sciences, 
the  latter  occurrence-sciences;  the  former  nomothetic,  the 
latter  idiographic. 

This  methodic  opposition  classifies  only  the  treatment, 
not  the  content,  of  knowledge  itself.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  same  subjects  may  be  made  object  of  both  nomothetic 
and  idiographic  investigation,  since  the  opposition  of  uniform 
and  unique  is  in  a  certain  sense  relative.  That  which  under- 
goes no  noticeable  change  within  a  vast  period  of  time,  and 
may  therefore  be  treated  nomothetically  in  its  unchangeable 
form,  may  yet  appear  to  a  wider  survey  as  something  valid 
only  for  an,  after  all,  limited  stretch  of  time ;  that  is,  as  some- 
thing happening  but  once.  Thus  a  language  in  all  its  par- 
ticular usages  is  controlled  by  its  law  of  form,  which  remains 
the  same  throughout  all  the  mutation  of  expression;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  this  whole  special  language  itself,  together 
with  its  whole  special  regularity  of  form,  is  yet  only  a  single 
transitory  phenomenon  in  human  linguistic  life  in  general. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  physiology  of  the  body,  of  geology, 
in  a  certain  sense  even  of  astronomy ;  and  thus  the  historical 
principle  is  carried  over  to  the  region  of  the  natural  sciences. 
The  classical  example  of  this  is  the  science  of  organic  nature. 
As  systematic,  it  is  of  a  nomothetic  character,  so  far  as  it 
may  consider  the  types  of  living  beings,  ever  self-identical 
within  the  multi-millennial  observation  of  man,  as  their  regu- 
lar form.  As  evolutionary  history,  exhibiting  the  whole 
series  of  earthly  organisms  as  a  process  of  derivation  or  trans- 
formation, whose  repetition  is  not  at  all  probable  in  any 
other  world — a  process  gradually  shaping  itself  in  the  course 


The  Problem  of  Method  311 

of  time — it  is  an  idiographic,  historical  discipline.  From 
such  a  point  of  view  Kant  could  already  speak  of  a  future 
"archaeology  of  nature." 

The  whole  speculative  development  has  shown  a  decisive 
preference  for  the  nomothetic  form  of  thought.  But  interest 
in  the  great  historical  reality  is  effecting  a  change  to  the 
idiographic.  The  two  agree  in  having  experiences,  the  facts 
of  perception,  for  their  starting-point.  Both  agree  in  dis- 
trusting what  the  naive  man  so  uniformly  thinks  he  expe- 
riences. For  their  basis  both  require  a  scientifically  trained 
and  a  logically  tested  experience.  The  difference  between 
natural  investigation  and  history  begins  with  the  problem  of 
the  utilization  of  facts  for  purposes  of  knowledge.  At  this 
point  the  former  seeks  laws,  the  latter  seeks  forms.  In  the 
former,  thought  presses  on  from  the  establishment  of  the 
particular  to  the  apprehension  of  universal  relations ;  in  the. 
latter,  it  is  limited  to  the  sympathetic  delineation  of  the 
particular.  For  the  natural  investigator,  the  single  object  of 
his  observation  never  as  such  has  scientific  worth;  it  serves 
him  only  so  far  as  he  may  believe  that  he  is  justified  in 
considering  it  as  type,  as  specimen  of  a  genius ;  he  reflects 
on  only  those  characteristics  which  will  yield  insight  into  a 
uniformity.  But  the  task  of  the  historian  is  to  reanimate 
some  formation  of  the  past  in  its  total  individual  aspect.  He 
fulfils  a  task  with  reference  to  what  was  once  actual,  similar 
to  that  of  the  artist  with  reference  to  that  which  is  in  his 
fantasy.  It  follows  from  this  that  the  predominant  inclina- 
tion in  scientific  thought  is  to  abstraction;  in  historical,  to 
visualization,  or,  better  perhaps,  to  intuition.  This  becomes 
all  the  more  clear  when  one  compares  the  results  of  the 
investigation  of  each.  However  fine-spun  the  analytic  labor 
of  historical  criticism  in  its  elaboration  of  tradition,  its  goal 
is  the  disentanglement  of  the  true  form  of  the  past,  in  living 
distinctness,  from  the  mass  of  material.     What  it  presents — 


312    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

these  are  pictures  of  men  and  of  human  life,  with  the  whole 
wealth  of  their  peculiar  development,  preserved  in  their  full 
individual  vividness.  Thus,  risen  from  oblivion  to  new  life, 
dead  languages,  vanished  peoples,  with  their  faith  and  forms, 
their  struggles  for  power  and  freedom,  their  poetry  and 
thought,  speak  to  us  through  the  mouth  of  history. 

But  the  world  which  natural  inquiry  builds  up  before  us 
is  very  different.  However  intuitive  its  starting-point  may 
be,  the  goal  of  its  knowledge  is  theories,  in  the  last  analysis 
mathematical  formulations  of  the  laws  of  motion.  In  a 
genuine  Platonic  manner,  it  leaves  behind  the  individual 
thing  of  sense,  which  arises  and  passes  away,  and  mounts  to 
a  knowledge  of  the  legal  necessities  which  rule  all  process  in 
timeless  unchangeability.  Out  of  the  rainbow  world  of  sense 
it  builds  a  system  of  conceptions  and  constructions,  in  which 
it  supposes  that  it  apprehends  the  true  essence  of  things  back 
of  phenomena,  colorless  and  changeless,  without  the  earthy 
smell  of  sense-qualities  upon  its  garments — the  triumph  of 
thought  over  perception!  Indifferent  to  the  transitory,  it 
casts  its  anchor  in  that  which  abides  eternally  the  same ;  it 
does  not  seek  the  transitory  as  such,  but  the  unchangeable 
form  of  change — the  nomothetic  method! 

These  two  methods  are  waging  a  profound  warfare  for 
the  regulative  influence  on  man's  general  view  of  the  world 
and  life.  The  great  question  is :  Which  is  more  valuable  for 
the  whole  purpose  of  our  knowledge — knowledge  of  laws,  or 
knowledgfe  of  events?  the  understanding  of  universal  time- 
less  being,  or  of  individual  temporal  phenomenon? 

The  idiographic  school  grants  that  the  knowledge  of  uni- 
versal laws  has  practical  worth — rendering  foreknowledge  of 
future  contingencies,  as  well  as  purposeful  encroachment  of 
man  in  the  course  of  things,  possible.  But,  none  the  less,  all 
purposeful  activity  in  the  collective  life  of  humanity  is  de- 
pendent upon  the  experiences  of  historical  knowledge.    Man 


The  Problem  of  Method  313 

is  an  animal  that  has  history.  His  civilized  life  is  an  historical 
connection,  solidifying  from  generation  to  generation ;  if  one 
would  enter  into  living  co-operation  with  this  connection,  one 
one  must  have  an  understanding  of  its  development. 

But  the  main  point  that  this  school  urges  is  not  such 
utility,  but  the  inner  worth  of  knowledge.  It  is  not  the 
personal  satisfaction  of  discovery  that  is  meant.  This  may 
be  equally  true  of  all  knowing.  The  degree  of  this  satisfac- 
tion is  determined  not  so  much  by  the  importance  of  the 
object  as  by  the  difficulty  of  the  investigation. 

But  there  is  an  objective  and  theoretical  distinction  in 
the  worth  of  the  knowledge  of  objects.  The  degree  of  this 
worth  is  the  degree  in  which  they  contribute  to  the  whole 
of  knowledge.  The  particular  remains  an  object  of  idle 
curiosity  unless  it  is  able  to  become  a  bailding-stone  in  a 
larger  edifice.  Thus,  even  "fact,"  in  a  scientific  sense,  is  a 
teleological  concept.  Not  just  any  actual  thing  is  a  fact  for 
science,  but  only  that  from  which  science  can  learn  some- 
thing. This  is  especially  true  for  history.  Many  an  event 
takes  place  which  is  no  historical  fact.  Science  sifts  out  the 
useful  and  lets  the  useless  go. 

But  this  articulation  of  single  knowledge  into  a  great 
whole  is  by  no  means  limited  to  the  inductive  subordination 
of  the  particular  under  a  generic  notion  or  under  a  general 
judgment.  Such  an  end  may  be  fulfilled  by  the  disposition 
of  a  single  characteristic  as  an  important  element  in  a  com- 
prehensive view.  The  preference  for  the  generic  is  a  one- 
sidedness  of  Greek  thought,  propagated  from  the  Eleatics  to 
Plato,  who  found  both  true  being  and  true  knowledge  in  the 
universal.  Continuous  therewith,  Schopenhauer  denied  the 
merit  of  genuine  science  to  history,  because  it  ever  appre- 
hends only  the  particular  and  never  the  universal.  To  be 
sure,  it  must  be  granted  that  it  is  natural  for  the  human 
understanding  to  apprehend  the  common  content  of  scattered 


314   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

individuals;  but  the  more  it  strives  after  concept  and  law, 
the  more  must  it  leave  the  individual  as  such  behind,  for- 
gotten and  sacrificed.  This  is  seen  especially  in  the  modern 
attempt  to  make  a  "natural  science  out  of  history."  What 
does  such  an  induction  of  laws  ultimately  leave  of  the  con- 
crete life  of  a  people?     Only  a  few  trivial  generalities. 

But,  in  opposition  to  this,  it  must  be  firmly  maintained 
that  all  interest  and  appreciation,  all  the  reason's  valuation 
of  man,  is  related  to  the  particular  and  to  what  happens  but 
once — das  Einmalige,  as  Windelband  says.  Our  feelings 
are  quickly  dulled  as  soon  as  the  object  to  which  they  are 
directed  is  multiplied,  or  as  soon  as  a  case  is  seen  to  be  but 
one  among  a  thousand.  "It  is  not  the  first  time,"  we  often 
say ;  and  its  significance  is  evident.  All  our  feeling  of  worth 
has  its  roots  in  the  once-happening,  in  the  incomparableness 
of  the  object.  Our  relation  to  personalities  indicates  how 
all  living  estimation  of  worth  depends  on  the  singularity  of 
the  object.  At  this  point,  moreover,  there  is  an  integration 
of  the  moral  method  in  the  idiographic — of  the  didactic, 
and  the  hero  with  his  deeds  is  accentuated  as  the  center  of 
history  —  Carlyle's  well-known  standpoint,  which  need  not, 
therefore,  be  further  stated. 

In  addition,  it  is  also  the  contention  of  the  idiographic 
school  that  historical  science  makes  little  demands  upon 
psychology,  a  nomothetic  science.  The  notoriously  small 
degree  to  which  the  laws  of  the  psychic  life  have  been 
formulated  has  never  stood  in  the  way  of  the  historian; 
common  sense,  tact,  and  genial  intuition  have  stood  him  in 
good  stead  to  understand  his  heroes  and  their  deeds.  It  may 
very  well  be  doubted  whether  the  modern  apprehension  of 
elementary  psychical  processes,  according  to  mathematics 
and  natural  law,  has  yielded  a  mentionable  contribution  to 
our  understanding  of  actual  human  life. 

Legality  of  happening  in  history  is  not  denied  by  the 


The  Problem  of  Method  315 

idiographic  school ;  rather,  they  grant  that  the  two  moments 
of  human  knowledge,  idiographic  and  nomothetic,  may  be 
referred  to  a  common  source.  The  causal  explanation  of  the 
single  occurrence  with  its  reduction  to  universal  law  suggests 
the  thought  that  it  must  be  possible,  in  the  last  analysis,  to 
comprehend  the  historical  idiom  on  the  basis  of  the  universal 
natural  legality  of  things.  Thus  Leibnitz  thought  that  ulti- 
mately all  vdriMs  de  fait  have  their  sufficient  grounds  in 
vSrit^s  6ternelles.  But  he  postulated  this  for  the  divine 
thought,  not  for  the  human.  Subsumption  under  law  does 
not  help  us  to  analyze  the  datum  in  time  to  its  ultimate 
grounds.  In  all  that  is  historically  and  individually 
experienced  there  is  a  remainder  that  is  incomprehensible  — 
something  inexpressible,  indefinable,  ineffable.  Thus,  the 
ultimate  and  innermost  essence  of  personality  resists  analysis 
by  means  of  categories,  and  this  that  is  incomprehensible 
appears  to  our  consciousness  as  the  feeling  of  the  causeless- 
ness  of  our  being;  that  is,  of  individual  freedom, 

Underivable  self-dependence,  universal  conformity  to  law 
— these  coexist  in  history.  All  efforts  fail  to  derive  the 
particular  from  the  universal,  the  "many"  from  the  "one," 
the  "finite"  from  the  "infinite,"  the  "existent"  from  the 
"essence."  This  is  a  chasm  which  the  great  systems  of 
philosophy  have  never  been  able  to  conceal  or  to  fill  up. 
Law  and  occurrence  remain  side  by  side  as  ultimate  incom- 
mensurable magnitudes  of  our  idea  of  the  world.  History 
photographs  and  values  the  occurrence,  but  does  not  seek 
after  the  law.  It  is  a  worth-science  rather  than  a  cause- 
science. 

It  is  hoped  that  the  foregoing  is  a  fair,  but  sympathetic, 
reflection  of  the  contention  of  the  idiographic  school.^  The 
opposition   to  this   on    the    part  of  the  nomothetic  school, 

1  See  RiCKERT,  op.  cit.,  pp.  305-517;  Windelband,  op.  cit.,  pp.  8-27;  Praeludien, 
pp.  211-80;  Troeltsch,  Historisches  bet  Kant. 


316    The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

since  it  accepts  the  definitions  and  determinations  of  the 
former,  may  be  more  briefly  and  summarily  presented. 

What  occurs  in  nature,  occurs  numberless  times;  there- 
fore the  natural  investigator  orders  his  facts  under  abstract 
laws.  Therefore  natural  science  is  nomothetic,  and  only 
the  universal  has  interest  for  it.  What  history  narrates 
happens  only  once;  for  history,  therefore,  the  individual  is 
worthful,  and  it  seeks  to  understand  the  individual  by 
sympathetically  living  therein.  So  the  idiographic  school, 
in  brief. 

To  this  the  nomothetic  school  replies  that  a  purely  formal 
characteristic  is  not  in  and  of  itself  appropriate  as  a  distinc- 
tion between  concepts  which  interest  us  above  all  else  by 
their  content,  not  on  account  of  the  greater  or  less  scope  of 
the  facts  capable  of  being  subsumed  under  them.  Such  a 
characteristic  is  not  at  all  appropriate,  if  it  does  not  actually 
suit,  and  is  therefore  a  priori  introduced,  even  by  those  who 
wish  to  employ  it,  as  a  rule  having  exceptions. 

That  formal  characteristic  is,  however,  false  in  a  twofold 
sense.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  true  that  the  singular 
plays  no  role  in  natural  investigation.  Almost  the  whole  of 
geology,  e.  g.,  consists  of  singular  facts.  Yet  one  would 
hardly  be  willing  to  affirm  that  the  investigation  of  the  ice- 
age,  because  this  probably  existed  but  once,  does  not  belong 
to  the  domain  of  natural  science,  but  is  relegated  to  the 
sympathetic  living  over  again  on  the  part  of  the  historian. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  true,  in  the  second  place,  that 
history  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  regular  as  such.  Since 
the  days  of  Polybius,  historians,  so  far  as  they  were  not  mere 
annalists,  have  not  omitted  to  indicate  simultaneous  occur- 
rences and  analogous  connections  in  different  times,  and  to 
employ  such  historical  parallels  in  the  interest  of  certain 
conclusions.  Whatever  one  may  think  of  the  scope  of  this 
comparative  treatment,   one   will  not  deny  its  right  in  the 


The  Problem  of  Method  317 

region  of  historical  inquiry  any  more  than  in  the  region  of 
natural  inquiry,  where  conditions  demand  that  singular  phe- 
nomena should  engage  our  attention.  However,  as  is  the 
case  with  most  false  affirmations,  a  grain  of  truth  remains 
here  after  allowance  is  made  for  the  false.  Historical  facts 
bear  a  singular  character  in  wider  scope  than  do  natural 
phenomena.  Still,  for  all  that,  the  characteristic  is,  as  such, 
even  in  the  cases  where  it  fits,  a  wrong  characteristic,  because 
it  is  a  merely /orma?  one.  As  such  it  forces  upon  us  precisely 
the  question  as  to  what  are  the  properties  which  belong  to  the 
material  content  of  the  phenomena — properties  from  which 
that  outer  characteristic  is  the  result.  If  the  question  is  put 
in  this  way,  the  answer  can  only  be  that  the  motives  of  act- 
ing personalities  are  dependent  in  a  higher  degree  on  individ- 
ual conditions,  and  that  with  the  reciprocal  action  of  many 
such  motives  with  outer  conditions  the  processes  must  neces- 
sarily be  of  a  more  singular  character  than  natural  phenom- 
ena, partly  in  consequence  of  the  general  character  of  psuchic 
processes,  partly  in  consequence  of  their  complex  nature.' 

As  one  goes  over  this  controversy  carefully,  one  becomes 
convinced,  I  think,  that  the  opposition  of  the  two  methods, 
the  nomothetic  and  the  idiographic,  is,  as  is  not  infrequently 
the  case  in  controversies,  complementary  and  not  exclusive. 
Philosophically,  the  nomothetic,  taken  by  itself  alone,  rests 
on  a  monistic  view  of  the  world;  the  idiographic,  taken  by 
itself  alone,  on  a  pluralistic  view  of  the  world.  But  since 
the  unity  and  the  multiplicity  of  reality  are  alike  real,  and 
equally  real,  an  exclusive  monism  and  an  exclusive  pluralism 
are  alike  partial  and  inadequate.  The  truth  of  the  former 
is  its  recognition  of  the  interaction  and  system  of  reality;  of 
the  latter,  the  relative  independence,  originality,  and  value 

iThe  above  is  Wundt's  critique  for  substance  as  given  in  his  Einleitung  in  die 
Philosophie.  But  see  also  his  Logik,  Vol.  II,  2.  Abschnitt;  and  also  his  Vdlker- 
psychologie.  Vol.  1, 1,  p.  15,  etc. ;  Paul,  Principien  der  Sprachgeschichte,  Einleitung; 
W.  DiLTHEY,  Ueber  eine  beschreibende  und  vergleichende  Psychologic. 


318    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Eeligion 

of  the  individual.  Each  conception,  indeed,  has  its  difficul- 
ties, and  a  complete  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  unity  and 
multiplicity  of  existence  seems  to  be  impossible.  But  there 
is  no  absolute  opposition  between  them.  Hence  there  need 
be  no  absolute  opposition  between  the  nomothetic  and  the 
idiographic  method.  Since  historical  reality  is  interrelated, 
there  may  be  a  nomothetic  science  of  history,  with  its 
comprehensive  generalizations;  and  history  cannot  forego 
such  generalizations  and  yet  satisfy  the  human  impulse  to 
know,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  human  need  to  capitalize  the 
experience  of  the  past  in  the  service  of  our  pilgrimage  along 
the  untried  and  perilous  paths  of  the  future,  on  the  other. 

Nevertheless,  there  is  sometimes  an  erroneous  and  danger- 
ous extreme  in  the  nomothetic  treatment  of  the  historical,  for 
which  the  idiographic  contention  serves  as  a  valuable  cor- 
rective; this  in  addition  to  the  independent  right  and  worth 
of  the  idiographic  method  in  its  discovery  and  appreciation 
of  the  facts  and  values  of  the  historical  in  general.  The 
nomothetic  method  easily  lends  itself  to  a  false  application 
of  the  natural-science  conception  of  "necessity"  to  historical 
reality.  There  is  an  ambiguity  in  the  word  "necessity" 
which  is  all  too  easily  forgotten  by  a  type  of  mind  which 
has  a  passion  for  causal  explanation.  Psychological-causal 
necessity  is  one  thing;  logical  and  ethical  necessity  is  quite 
another.  It  is  only  empirical-inductive  history  that  has 
to  do  w4th  psychological-causal  necessity.  Here  necessity 
sio^nifies  nothinof  more  than  the  affiliation  of  an  occurrence 
with  antecedent  forces  which  investigation  exhibits,  without 
considering  the  combination  of  cause  and  efPect  other  than 
actual  connection  confirmed  by  analogous  processes  known  in 
experience.  Such  historical  science  takes  everything  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  finished  occurrence,  and  seeks  only  the 
relation  of  an  event  to  a  motive.  No  consideration  is  given  to 
the  manifold  possibilities  with  which  the  agent  reckons.     But 


The  Problem  of  Method  319 

this  psychological-causal  necessity  of  explanation  does  not 
coincide  with  the  logical-ethical  necessity  of  decision  on  the 
part  of  him  who  thinks  and  acts.  But  it  is  this  latter  which 
the  historian  should  have  in  mind  when  he  speaks  of  the 
unfolding,  the  working-out,  the  bodying-forth,  of  a  principle. 
And  it  is  pure  personal  decision  and  inner  conviction  that 
are  regulative  for  the  estimation  of  necessity  in  this  sense. 
To  draw  an  illustration  from  the  main  subject  in  hand:  it  is 
of  no  importance,  so  far  as  the  question  of  essence  is  con- 
cerned, to  know  and  describe  as  a  necessity  of  the  psycho- 
logical-causal kind  the  development  of  primitive  Christian 
missions  into  Catholicism,  of  Catholicism  into  Protestantism, 
etc.  This  proves  nothing  at  all  as  regards  what  the  histori- 
cal development  oiight  to  have  been  in  order  to  correspond 
with  the  essence,  and  would  actually  have  been  if  the  essence 
had  been  fully  received  and  honored.  Therefore  the  determi- 
nation of  the  essence  is  not  so  much  a  psychological-causal 
task  as  a  personal  ethical  judgment  concerning  the  cor- 
respondence of  a  phenomenon  of  history  with  the  idea  and 
impulse  of  Christianity.  But  by  so  much  as  the  task  involves 
an  ethical  value-judgment,  it  is  manifest  that  the  idiographic 
method  is  indispensable.  The  nomothetic  will  assist  in  the 
divinatory  abstraction,  of  which  Troeltsch  makes  so  much; 
but  in  and  with  this  there  must  be  a  criticism,  founded  in 
ethical  personality,  measuring  phenomena  by  the  essence; 
and  for  this  the  idiographic  method  is  our  main  instru- 
ment. 

Perhaps  we  may  now  set  forth  the  net  results  of  this 
intricate  controversy  so  far  as  it  affects  the  subject  under 
consideration.  How  far  can  strict  adhesion  to  the  historic 
method,  combining,  as  indicated,  features  from  both  the 
nomothetic  and  idiographic  school,  bring  us  on  our  way  as 
we  seek  to  discriminate  the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion  ? 
It  may  facilitate  our  statement  if  we  begin  at  the  periphery 


320    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

and  pass  gradually  toward  the  center  as  far  as  the  limitations 
of  the  method  and  the  nature  of  the  problem  will  allow. 

First,  then,  the  historical  method  should  serve  us  as  we  seek 
to  distinguish  between  an  historical  fact  and  an  historical- 
science  fact,  thus  saving  us  from  attaching  importance 
to  the  unimportant.  It  is  not  meant  that  the  contingent 
has  no  right  in  history,  for  actual  history  contains  much 
that  is  contingent — a  fulness  of  phenomena  which  are  not 
naturally  connected  with  a  given  essence,  but  are  aggluti- 
nated thereto  in  the  course  of  the  unfolding  and  realization 
of  the  essence,  and,  possibly,  at  times  powerfully  influencing 
the  development.  Thus,  contact  with  the  antique,  the  situ- 
ation of  the  Middle  Ages,  etc.,  account  for  much  that  is 
contingent,  which,  however,  are  apparently  welded  with  our 
religion,  but  are  yet  no  organic  part  of  it  and  no  natural 
product  or  expression  of  it.  But  while  this  is  true,  it  must 
be  recognized  that  such  accidental  phenomena  may  have 
their  right  and  function  as  coefficients  to  enhance  and 
strengthen  the  essence  with  which  they  have  become  asso- 
ciated.' Whether,  now,  a  phenomenon  of  history  is  contin- 
gent or  organic  to  the  essence;  whether,  if  contingent,  it  is 
neutral  or  coefficient — this  is  an  elusive  and  difficult  point 
which  only  long  familiarity  with  the  historical  method,  in- 
strumental in  detecting,  comparing,  and  weighing  influences, 
can  enable  even  a  personality  pervaded  with  religio-ethical 
impulses  and  trained  in  exact-historical  work  to  solve. 

Secondly,  the  historical  material,  usually  bulky,  must  be 
exhumed  from  half-buried,  distorted,  and  fragmentary  tradi- 
tion, and  so  ordered  as  to  be  accessible  to  higher,  scientific 
treatment.  This  includes  the  discovery  of  sources  and  their 
criticism.  It  also  imposes  the  nice  and  delicate  task  of 
reconstructing  and  relating  the  facts  with  just  the  color 
and  emphasis  which  they  possessed  in  the  living  situation. 

1  See  Harnack,  op.  cit.,  p.  172. 


The  Problem  of  Method  321 

That  is,  the  complex  of  phenomena  must  be  restored  by  the 
genius  and  skill  of  the  constructive  imagination.  This  is, 
indeed,  preliminary  work.  But  it  cannot  be  omitted  by  the 
historian  who  seeks  to  know  historical  reality — as  little  by 
the  historian  of  the  Christian  religion  as  by  any  other 
historian.  To  get  at  the  naked  skeleton  of  historical  fact 
through,  and  by  means  of,  the  legendary  traditions,  the 
whispered  rumors,  the  partisan  chronicles,  the  traditions 
derived  from  still  more  original  sources  —  this  is  a  task 
always  to  be  attempted,  never  perhaps  to  be  entirely  accom- 
plished. And  this  is  the  task  of  the  idiographic  method. 
But  it  is  evident  that  this  criticism  is  only  substructure  and 
preparation  for  higher  historical  science.  It  puts  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  latter  the  isolated  historical  fact  and  the  simple 
historical  series  of  facts  as  immediately  derived  from  the 
sources;  it  prepares  the  material;  it  is  restricted,  however, 
to  the  material  in  its  particularity ;  what  the  material  signi- 
fies for  human  thought — that  is,  signifies  scientifically  in 
the  higher  sense — is  another  question.  This  criticism  says 
nothing  as  to  what  higher — and  at  the  same  time  deeper  — 
connections  control  these  facts  and  these  series  of  facts  as  a 
whole.  At  this  point  the  historian — of  Christianity  as  of 
all  else — must  put  himself  under  the  guidance  of  the  nomo- 
thetic method.  But  is  not  this  method  metaphysically  con- 
ditioned? Without  doubt;  so  is  the  idiographic;  so,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  is  all  method.  The  nomothetic 
method  has  displaced  the  method  of  miraculous  supernatu- 
ralism  which  was  content  to  see  the  hand  of  God  in  history; 
and  of  ideology  with  its  transcendence  of  ideas — an  offshoot 
of  the  identity-philosophy  of  the  post-Kantian  idealism  with 
its  deductive  writing  of  history.  It  is  inductive,  much  as  it 
operates  with  a  definite  presupposition;  that  is,  with  the 
assumption  that  all  that  occurs  in  the  course  of  history  is  in 
accord  with  an  uninterrupted  connection  of  cause  and  effect — 


322    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

an  assumption  which  does  not  necessitate  the  obliteration 
of  the  distinction  between  the  natural  and  the  historical. 
Ideology,  like  supernaturalism,  sets  out  from  the  opposite 
presupposition  of  the  thought  of  divine  encroachment  in  the 
world  of  historical  happening — ideas  as  emanations  of  the 
Absolute  are  incorporated  in  history,  geniuses  are  super- 
historically  fructified.  The  thought  of  causality,  however — 
let  it  be  repeated — according  to  which  phenomena  are 
concatenated,  is  purely  historical  causality,  which  does  not 
raise  the  question  of  deterministic  necessity,  but  only  of  the 
affiliation  of  a  phenomenon  with  its  antecedent,  and  not  only 
does  not  deny,  but  leaves  room  for  novelty  and  originality 
in  every  new  situation  or  event  that  arises — the  new  and 
original  not,  however,  therefore  exempt  from  law  and  cause. 
Thus,  applying  this  to  our  problem,  while  the  determi- 
nation of  the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion  grows  out  of 
the  method  and  spirit  of  the  empirical-inductive  writing  of 
history,  it  is  yet  a  task  of  a  higher  order;  it  lies  at  the  point 
of  transition  from  empirical-inductive  history  to  the  philoso- 
phy of  history.  And  if  one  chooses  to  say  that  the  deter- 
mination of  the  essence  is  a  purely  historical  task,  "purely 
historical"  must  signify  a  whole  Weltanschauung,  and  the 
controversy  thus  becomes  a  matter  of  words.  But  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  the  historical  method,  narrowly  conceived, 
yielding  only  exact-historical  results,  is  an  inadequate  instru- 
ment in  this  field.  It  cannot  determine  the  peculiar  char- 
acter and  the  peculiar  worth  of  the  Christian  religion  in 
contradistinction  to  all  other  religions ;  nor  the  Weltan- 
schauung belonging  structurally  to  the  Christian  religion  in 
contradistinction  to  other  actual  or  possible  Weltanschauun- 
gen.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  writer  doubts  the  propriety 
of  the  above-mentioned  widening  of  the  scope  of  historic 
method,  or  of  limiting  the  treatment  of  the  question  as  to 
the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion  to  a  purely  historical 


The  Peoblem  of  Method  323 

consideration.  Rather,  the  question  must  also  be  treated  and 
evaluated  in  a  religio-philosopliical  manner;  in  fact,  philoso- 
phy in  general  must  be  marshaled  into  service  before  the  task 
is  done.  Nevertheless,  historical  investigation  does  come  first, 
first  in  its  idiographic  aspect,  then  in  its  nomothetic.  For 
the  Christian  religion  is  from  one  point  of  view  an  historical 
magnitude.  That  is,  it  entered  into  the  history  of  humanity 
at  a  definite  time,  and  has  undergone  historical  unfolding 
and  development  since  that  time.  Moreover,  an  historical 
treatment  of  the  Christian  reliorion  must  be  relio^io-historical 
today.  We  must  compare  Christianity  with  other  religions 
of  humanity;  we  must  ask  what  "moments"  it  has  in  com- 
mon with  them,  and  what  other  "moments"  form  its  specific 
differentia.  And  we  must  then  seek  to  fathom  and  explore 
those  ultimate  inner  facts  of  consciousness  which  lie  behind 
both  those  marks  common  to  all  religions  and  those  specifi- 
cally peculiar  to  the  Christian  religion.  In  this  way  we  pre- 
pare for  the  "divinatory  abstraction,"  of  which  Troeltsch 
rightly  makes  so  much. 

Thirdly,  in  all  the  foregoing  discussion  there  is  a  painful 
defect  which  it  is  difficult  to  obviate.  Religion  is  intensely 
personal,  and  science  can  never  fathom  the  depth  nor  illumine 
the  mystery  of  a  personality,  however  lowly.  All  greatness 
in  the  spiritual  world  is,  however,  born  out  of  the  sublime 
enthusiasm  of  towering  personalities.  Only  persons  can 
understand  and  interpret  persons;  but  what  person  is  great 
enough  to  understand  and  interpret  Jesus?  To  Renan,  for 
example,  Jesus  was  the  hero  of  a  tragedy;  but  is  not  the 
weakness  of  Renan's  delineation  of  Jesus  due  to  a  lack  of 
congeniality  with  his  hero?  Renan  was  too  small  for  po 
great  a  subject.  What  was  true  of  him  is  true  more  or  less 
>of  all.  Hence  it  will  never  be  granted  to  any  single  individ- 
ual to  say  the  last  word  on  this  subject. 

By  so  much  as  the  solution  of  the  problem  is  dependent 


324    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

upon  psychic  forces,  upon  the  content  and  quality  of  ethico- 
religious  personality,  by  so  much  is  a  strictly  objective  and 
impartial  determination  of  the  essence  impossible.  More- 
over, just  on  this  account  it  is  a  task  whose  solution  can  be 
proved  to,  and  forced  upon,  no  one.  There  is  too  much  of  a 
personal  and  subjective  nature  in  the  solution  for  one  to  be 
unconditionally  convinced,  to  say  nothing  of  the  inevitable 
prepossession  or  passion  which  renders  serene  and  disin- 
terested judgment  impossible.  Certainly  it  is  a  subject 
from  which  the  smatterer,  the  doctrinaire,  the  fanatic,  and 
the  specialist  should  alike  refrain. 

Finally,  determination  of  essence  is  construction  of  essence, 
since  the  task  is  personally  conditioned.  That  is,  it  is  not 
simply  a  datum  to  be  received,  but  a  reality  to  be  created 
ever  anew.  Hence  the  significance  of  the  influence  of  per- 
sonal subjective  presuppositions.  But  if  the  conception  of 
Christianity  is  conditioned  by  the  personal  attitude  toward 
it,  this  personal  attitude  is  conditioned  in  turn  by  the  age  of 
the  world  in  which  one  lives,  the  type  of  civilization  of  which 
one  is  a  member,  the  stage  of  culture  to  which  one  belongs, 
and  the  local  and  temporal  currents  or  drifts  from  which  one, 
try  hard  as  one  may,  cannot  hold  himself  aloof.  All  in  all, 
therefore,  the  task  is  not  simply  scientific,  but  moral,  and 
thus  belongs  to  man's  larger  vocation  of  forming  an  ethical 
personality  through  pain  and  struggle,  perplexity  and  sorrow. 
Once  personal,  man  must  be  free — free  lord  even  of  the 
essence  of  the  Christian  religion. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    ESSENCE   OP  THE   CHRISTIAN  RELIGION:  SOURCES 
OF  THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 

Did  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ever  live?  We  have  never  seen 
his  face.  Nor  do  we  possess  a  single  line  in  his  handwriting. 
He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  anxious  to  follow  the  example 
of  Moses  and  leave  "his  teaching"  behind  him  on  tables  of 
stone  for  humanity,  or  to  deposit  it  in  books,  as  the  prophets 
did.  Nor  do  we  even  have  a  narrative  concerning  Jesus  in 
the  handwriting  of  those  who  claim  to  have  walked  and 
talked  with  him  in  the  way.  Centuries  of  waste  and  revolu- 
tion intervene  between  our  oldest  records  of  that  life  and 
the  original  autographs,  which,  as  said,  we  do  not  have. 
Furthermore,  these  oldest  records  are  not  a  biography  of  the 
life  of  Jesus,  but  gospel ;  not  Jesus'  gospel,  but  ''  Gospel  of 
[?'.  e.,  about]  Jesus  Christ."  The  material  for  writing  a  life 
of  Jesus,  in  the  strict  sense  of  that  word,  does  not  exist.  A 
few  fragments  of  that  life,  bits  of  memorabilia  from  the  life 
of  Jesus — that,  at  best,  is  all.  And  among  these  the  historic- 
pragmatic  connection  is  wanting.  Moreover,  for  those  who 
tried  to  apperceive  Jesus  it  was  a  psychological  necessity 
to  assign  him  a  place  in  their  circle  of  religious  ideas — in 
the  sphere  of  the  Israelitish  hope.  They  proclaimed  him  as 
Messiah.  What  we  really  have  is  the  portrait,  or  portraits, 
that  they  painted ;  we  do  not  have  his  face.  It  is  an  apoca- 
lyptic picture  painted  in  glowing  oriental  colors — a  creation 
of  Jewish  longings,  perhaps?  Mention  was  made  in  the 
previous  chapter  of  many  quite  specifically  different  por- 
traits of  Jesus  throughout  history,  most  of  them  different 
from  the  Jewish  one.  Portraits  sometimes  are  ideal  pro- 
ductions of  the  artistic  imagination,  to  which  no  original 

325 


326    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

corresponds.  Such  are  some  of  these  Jesus-portraits;  pos- 
sibly they  all  are.  Did  Jesus  really  live?  Did  not  some 
artistic  spirit  produce  the  picture?  But,  then,  could  he  have 
done  it  without  himself  being  a  Jesus  ?  Still,  not  every  artist 
is  the  ideal  he  paints,  not  every  novelist  the  hero  he  depicts. 
We  should  like  to  say  that  the  soul  of  the  artist  must  have 
been  a  Jesus-soul,  else  he  could  not  have  drawn  the  Jesus- 
character;  but  we  are  not  quite  sure  that  the  statement  would 
be  true.  But  it  is  fair  to  ask:  Who  was  the  master  that 
painted  this  Jesus  ?  What  has  become  of  his  works  ?  Only 
bits  of  leaves  blown  about  by  a  careless  breeze  are  left,  and 
they  were  gathered  up  in  our  gospels.  But  these  scraps  do 
not  appear  to  have  been  artistically  pieced  together.  All 
in  all,  we  hesitate  to  take  seriously  such  an  hypothesis  of  the 
origin  of  our  Jesus.  The  supposition  is  too  great  a  strain 
upon  literary-historical  and  aesthetic  possibility. 

But  there  are  other  possibilities,  more  plausible  perhaps. 
Perhaps  Christ  is  the  embodiment  of  an  idea:  the  idea  of  a 
redeemed  people,  or  of  a  divine  humanity,  or  of  a  political 
or  popular  movement.  So  scholars,  whom  historical  science 
does  not  make  sure  that  Jesus  existed,  have  sometimes 
wondered.  At  this  writing  the  sensation  of  the  hour  in 
theological  Germany  is  a  brilliant  and  effective  pastor^  who 
has  concluded  that  Jesus  was  an  ideal  construction  of  a 
definite  social  circle.  "The  fate  of  Christ  is  the  fate  of  the 
proletariat  in  the  Roman  Empire,  embodied  in  a  plastic 
form,  in  a  typical  ideal  picture.  The  type  of  the  repressed 
part  of  humanity,  this  is  Christ."  To  the  objection  that  a 
Christianity  without  the  Jesus  of  history  would  be  like 
Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left  out,  he  makes  a  reply  that  should 
cause  us  to  stop  and  think,  viz. :  We  have  had  fifteen  centuries 
of  Christianity  without  the  Jesus  of  history,  but  only  with  the 
Christ  of  faith,  and  we  must  choose  between  denying  that 

lA.  Kalthoff.  See  his  Das  Christus-Problem:  Grundlinien  zu  einer  Social- 
Theologie  (1903) 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  327 

these  centuries  have  been  Christian  —  a  strange  provi- 
dence!— and  affirming  the  ideality  of  the  Jesus-figure.  It 
is  of  the  essence  of  faith,  he  also  says,  to  fix  and  visualize 
its  peculiar  principle.  Each  age  must  do  this  anew.  What 
we  need  is  a  new  symbol,  a  new  object! fication  which  shall 
function  as  serviceably  in  our  religion  today  as  the  antique 
portrait  did  in  primitive  Christianity.  Is  not  our  religious 
collective  spirit  vigorous  enough  to  create  a  new  Christ- 
portrait  for  our  time? 

Instead  of  being  impatient  or  indifferent  toward  such 
reflections  as  the  foregoing,  we  may  put  them  to  a  good  use. 

a)  Speculation  is  able  to  assign  limits  to  the  competency 
of  historical  science.  As  the  nature  that  is  known  does  not 
exist  apart  from  the  mind  that  knows,  so  neither  does  history 
that  is  known  exist  apart  from  the  mind  that  knows.  It  is 
as  impossible  epistemologically  for  biblical  science  to  pass 
from  the  portrait  to  the  face,  from  the  Christ  of  faith  to  the 
Jesus  of  history — that  is,  to  the  bare  Jesus-in-himself — as  it 
is  for  natural  science  to  get  behind  phenomena  to  the  thing- 
in-itself .  Signs  are  not  wanting  that  the  Kantian  Ding-an- 
sich  has  been  expatriated  from  metaphysics  only  to  be 
naturalized  in  biblical  science.  As  in  the  knowledofe  of  all 
objects,  so  in  that  of  Jesus,  the  mind  is  creative  in  knowing, 
the  mind  constructs  its  object,  and  in  doing  so  contributes 
to  that  which  is  known  somewhat  from  its  own  apperceptive 
possessions.  In  knowing  Jesus,  as  in  other  knowledge,  it  is 
impossible  for  the  knower  to  subtract  his  own  contribution 
to  the  known  object  (since  by  this  contribution  alone  does  he 
know),  and  thereby  have  as  remainder  the  pure  Jesus-in- 
himself.  Nor  can  the  historic  method  detach  Jesus  from  his 
articulate  place  in  the  historical  concatenation  and  exhibit 
him  as  a  simple,  isolated,  objective  entity.  A  being  thus 
out  of  relations  would  not  be  at  all.  In  view  of  these  con- 
siderations, one  must  recognize  the  elements  of  truth  in  the 


328    The  Finality  op  the  Cheistian  Keligion 

idealist  contention,  much  as  one  may  be  unable  to  go   to 
its  extremes. 

b)  Rigid  limitations  must  also  be  assigned  to  the  practical 
value  of  historical  science.  The  functional  value  of  the 
Jesus  of  the  gospels  to  us  in  no  wise  depends  upon  the 
scientific  recovery  of  the  exact  genesis  and  structure  of  his 
consciousness.  Nowhere  does  the  biolos^ical  exercise  of 
function  depend  upon  a  scientific  knowledge  of  the  organ. 
Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  the  function  precedes  and,  in  a 
certain  sense,  determines  the  organism — a  fact  that,  mutatis 
mutandis,  lends  some  color,  rather  than  otherwise,  to  the 
standpoint  of  Kalthoff  and  his  predecessors.  The  practical 
value  of  water  has  not  tarried  for  the  chemist's  determina- 
tion of  its  constituents.  To  be  sure,  the  chemist's  attitude 
to  water,  like  that  of  the  artist,  has  value  for  life;  but  the 
practical  attitude  of  thirst,  or  of  industry,  is  the  primary 
test  of  the  value  of  water.  So,  too,  the  historian's  exposi- 
tion of  Jesus  will  ever  remain  subordinate  to  the  worth  of 
Jesus  as  evinced  in  his  practical  effectiveness  in  the  lives  of 
his  confessors.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  certainty,  among  Chris- 
tian people,  that  Jesus  ever  lived  is  a  conviction  of  religious 
faith,  and  not  a  conclusion  of  scientific  investigation.  It  is 
only  in  mathematics  and  deductive  logic — sciences  irrelevant 
to  the  subject-matter  in  question — that  we  have  what  may 
be  called  strictly  certain  knowledge.  Natural-science  knowl- 
edge, where  experimentation  and  verification  are  possible, 
affords  a  high  degree  of  certainty.  But  as  regards  all  tradi- 
tion, there  is  only  probability,  possibility,  and  no  knowledge 
at  all.  In  the  region  of  knowledge,  therefore,  doubt  is  either 
abnormal,  as  would  be  the  case  in  mathematics,  or  a  duty  of 
conscience,  as  is  the  case  with  respect  to  all  knowledge  that 
rests  upon  human  tradition.  In  the  region  of  religious  faith, 
doubt  does  not  arise  from  lack  of  knowledge,  but  from  want 
of  receptivity  to  the  moral  worth  of  the  world.      Religious 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      329 

certainty  has  its  roots  in  the  will  and  conscience  rather  than 
in  the  theoretical  -understanding ;  it  reposes  in  principle  upon 
no  science,  not  even  biblical  science.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
is  what  the  conscience  and  will  possess  from  the  content  of 
the  personality  of  the  Christ  portrayed  in  the  gospels  and 
the  epistles,  rather  than  the  proofs  which  the  science  of 
history  marshals,  that  is,  and  is  to  be,  the  source  of  the 
church's  assurance  that  he  belongs  to  the  world  of  objective 
reality,  and  not  to  the  creations  of  the  literary  artist,  or  of  a 
people's  poesy,  or  of  the  symbolic  imagination  of  a  religious 
community.  Jesus  is  an  object  both  of  knowledge  and  of 
faith.  It  is  as  a  constituent  of  history  that  he  is  an  object 
of  knowledge — of  a  science  whose  instrument  is  not  faith; 
but  for  faith  Jesus  comes  into  consideration  as  revelation  of 
God  to  the  inner  life  of  man ;  therefore  not  at  all  as  science 
evaluates  him,  but  according  to  his  supersensible  worth  and 
meaning.  Faith  views  Jesus  suh  specie  aeternitatis ;  science 
views  him  suh  specie  icmporis. 

But  perhaps  the  limitations  of  the  practical  value  of  his- 
torical science  in  this  region  may  be  best  appreciated  by 
taking  an  example.  What  is  the  basis  of  our  certainty  that 
Jesus  was  not  "holden  of  death,"  but  lives  in  divine  glory? 
Is  this  certainty  an  historical  certainty  founded  upon  histori- 
cal narratives  ?  It  is  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  The  point 
is  not  that  the  historical  narratives  of  the  resurrection  are 
not  of  such  a  nature  as  to  produce  historical-science  certainty, 
though  that  is  true.  It  is  that  nowhere  is  historical-science 
certainty  a  cause  of  which  religious  certainty  is  the  effect. 
The  certainty  in  question  is  a  conviction  of  the  religious 
view  of  the  world,  a  religious  certainty,  which  we  lay  hold  of 
at  our  peril  merely  on  the  witness  of  another,  or  even  of 
historical  science,  but  of  which  likewise  we  are  willing  to  be 
robbed  by  no  one,  nor  again  by  historical  science.  This 
religious  certainty  may  very  well  be  compatible,  indeed,  with 


330    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

an  historical  attitude  toward  Jesus,  but  in  and  of  itself  it  has 
nothing  to  do  with  historical  investigation  as  such.  Much 
scientific  confusion  and  religious  distress  today  are  directly 
traceable  to  the  failure  of  the  historian  to  recognize  that  he 
can  no  more  prove,  by  historical  means,  that  Jesus  now  lives, 
than  he  can  contest  it.  All  efforts  to  provide,  in  the  use  of 
the  means  of  historical  science,  a  substructure  of  historical 
phenomena  for  this  confession,  transcend  the  prerogatives 
of  such  science,  and  do  not  even  have  the  merit  of  an  apolo- 
getic demonstration,  to  say  nothing  of  a  conquest  of  historical 
territory. 

"But  that  Jesus,  not  lives  now,  but  lived — does  not  our 
conviction  that  he  lived  repose  upon  the  science  of  history?" 
Does  it?  Rather,  do  we  not  pass  from  the  certainty  that 
Jesus  is  suh  specie  aeternitatis  to  the  certainty  that  he  is 
sub  specie  temporis?  In  other  words,  as  already  indicated, 
is  our  religious  certainty  dependent  here  upon  our  historical 
certainty,  or  vice  versci?  What  is  the  psychological  fact  in 
the  case?  If  our  religious  certainty  reposed  upon  our 
historical  certainty,  then,  since  the  latter,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  never  transcends  probable  certainty,  the  former 
would  never  transcend  probability,  and,  moreover,  would  be 
at  the  mercy  of  the  vicissitudes  of  historical  science.  We 
are  more  certain  that  Jesus  existed  than  historical  science 
can  make  us  be,  and  we  are  more  certain  because  our 
religious  apprehension  of  the  glory  of  his  inner  life  reacts 
upon  our  study  of  the  outer  biography,  inducing  an  historical 
certainty  in  excess  of  the  competency  of  science  to  engender. 
The  author  is  convinced  that  an  interrogation  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  Christians  will  verify  his  position  that  they  pass 
from  their  value-judgment  to  their  existence-judgment,  from 
their  conviction  of  the  worth  of  Jesus  to  their  conviction  that 
he  is  an  historical  character.  Hence,  too — a  distinction  with 
an  important  difference — it  is  not  he  who  does  not  have  the 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  331 

historical  certainty  that  Jesus  existed  that  is  none  of  his ;  it 
is  he  who  has  not  the  spirit  of  Jesus  that  is  none  of  his,' 

The  author  does  not  wish  to  seem  to  deny  that  there  are 
difficulties  in  connection  with  this  matter  which  have  not  yet 
been  cleared  up.  Today  there  are  two  kinds  of  spirits  which 
dream  of  a  Christianity  without  Christ:  the  weak  and  the 
strong.  The  weak  are  those  who  have  received  all  the  price- 
less blessings  which  we  possess  in  Christianity,  only  at  third 
or  fourth  hand.  They  have  been  refreshed,  nourished,  led 
by  these  blessings  —  whence  they  came  is  of  little  concern  to 
them.  They  live  upon  their  patrimony  or  upon  the  goods 
of  others ;  but  such  goods  have  never  become  their  very  own ; 
they  have  never  come  to  the  fountain.  The  others  are  the 
strong.  They  know  very  well  that  Christianity  sprang  from 
Christ.  But  one  does  not  now  need  him  longer.  Were  they 
to  be  quite  frank,  they  would  say  that  he,  not  entirely  unlike 
miracles,  had  come  to  be  something  of  a  hindrance.  But 
would  it  not  poorly  serve  the  expansion  of  Christianity,  the 
pervasion  of  the  world  with  Christianity,  and  one's  own  peace 
and  joy  in  Christianity,  to  drain  off  the  fountain?  Is  not 
their  view  much  the  same  as  if  we  were  to  sever  the  connec- 
tion of  our  arteries  with  the  heart  whence  our  blood  comes? 
To  be  sure,  one  cannot  always  sit  at  the  fountain.  One  must 
often  labor  in  the  distance,  in  dry  and  barren  lands ;  and  one 
can  hold  out  a  long  time,  can  live  long  there  upon  the  forces 
and  juices  one  has  brought  with  him.  But  he  cannot  endure 
his  privations  in  the  long  run,  except  at  the  expense  of 
his  health.  The  weak  of  whom  we  are  thinking  are  not 
yet  Christians.  The  strong — they  should  consider  whether 
their  redemption  requires  a  redeemer  any  longer,  whether 
they  are  such  perfected  children  of  God  that  they  no  longer 
need  the  child  of  Bethlehem.  We  do  not  yet  see  God  face 
to  face,  nor  walk  in  eternal  light.      We  still  need  the  friend 


1  Rom.  8:96. 


332    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

who  leads  us  tlirougli  the  dark  hour  of  life  and  the  darker 
hour  of  death. 

c)  But  granting  that  the  weak  depend  too  much  upon  the 
historical,  and  the  strong  too  little,  for  the  interest  of  a  true 
religious  certainty,  our  query  still  remains  as  to  the  histori- 
cal certainty  concerning  Jesus  and  his  life.  History  here  is 
not  only  subject  to  the  limitations  which  speculation  detects 
and  practice  discloses;  it  is  also  limited  by  the  scantiness  of 
the  data  and  the  difficult  access  thereto.  Tradition  has 
preserved  nothing  certain  concerning  his  early  development. 
Nor  are  we  in  a  position  to  reconstruct  psychologically  his 
inner  development  on  the  basis  of  the  confessions  of  the 
grown  man.  We  cannot  even  show  a  development  of  Jesus 
during  the  period  of  his  public  ministry.  The  fragmentary 
character  of  the  tradition,  as  already  said,  is  known  to  all. 
The  tradition  is  not  a  single  unitary  complex,  but  frequently 
a  collection  of  isolated  particulars,  brief  communications 
concerning  experiences  and  confessions  of  Jesus  in  many 
various  situations.  Not  seldom  the  situation  itself  is  tradi- 
tionary. "In  all  cases  it  is  important  not  to  appreciate  the 
single  saying  of  Jesus  as  anonymous,  timeless,  lifeless,  dog- 
matic sentence  and  assign  it  a  place  in  the  system  of  Jesus, 
but  to  reconstruct  the  situation  in  which  it  was  spoken,  could 
be  spoken,  and  to  conclude  from  the  confession  therein  made 
to  the  personality  of  Jesus"  (Deissmann).  Moreover,  the 
eye  trained  in  such  matters  easily  detects  that  the  original 
portrait  of  Jesus  has  been  painted  over.  This  is  due,  not 
only  to  the  true-hearted  sentiments  of  the  popular  faith  with 
its  delight  in  the  marvelous,  but  also  to  conscious  dogmatic 
or  ecclesiastical  tendency.  Furthermore,  the  investigation 
of  Jesus  is  singularly  complicated  by  the  circumstance  that 
the  same  particular  is  handed  down  in  variations  even  in  the 
oldest  sources  themselves.  It  is  difficult,  sometimes  impos- 
sible, to  determine  which  should  have  preference.     Finally, 


SOUECES    OF    THE    LiFE    OF    JeSUS  333 

the  historian  has  to  reckon  with  another  difficulty.  Behind 
the  venture  of  historical  labor,  scarcely  a  century  old,  there 
lie  almost  two  thousand  years  of  religio- contemplative, 
artistic,  poetic,  liturgic,  and  dogmatic  work  upon  the  form  of 
Jesus.  All  this  has  created  an  apperceptive  content  which 
exercises  powerful  mastery  over  the  historical  material,  and 
also  an  atmosphere  which  refracts  the  light  coming  from  the 
far-ofp  countenance  of  the  Nazarene.  It  is  the  historian's 
task  to  pass  as  best  he  may  through  the  halo  to  the  plain  brow 
itself,  and — a  test  of  the  historian's  character! — to  see  the 
great — nay,  the  greatest — in  the  simplicity  of  the  unadorned 
reality.  For  it  is  not  in  Messiah,  and  Logos,  and  two-nature 
entity,  and  second  person  of  the  Trinity,  and  host,  and  ubi- 
quity, and  the  like,  that  the  greatness — nay,  the  Godlikeness 
— of  Jesus  lies,  but  in  the  real  and  full  human  quality  of  his 
inner  life;  in  such  things,  for  instance,  as  the  clearness  of 
his  moral  discernment  and  the  energy  of  his  moral  purpose. 
But  this  remark  is  to  anticipate.  It  is  our  own  purpose 
to  take  the  path  of  history  for  a  time.  The  purpose  of  the 
foregoing  discussion  is  to  avoid  false  expectations.  Histori- 
cal certainty  is  not  religious  certainty ;  the  latter  is  generi- 
cally  different  from  the  former.  Nor  does  religious  certainty 
depend  upon  historical  certainty  in  the  sense  that  is  usually 
supposed.  In  the  subject  under  consideration  historical 
knowledge  is  very  limited.  Strictly  speaking,  all  knowledge 
in  this  region  is  probable  knowledge.  But  we  wish  to  avail 
ourselves  of  the  benefit  of  it,  such  as  it  is,  as  we  seek  to 
know  Jesus  and  to  determine  his  place  in  religion.  For  the 
rest  of  this  chapter,  it  is  necessary  to  determine  the  sources 
of  the  life  of  Jesus. ^ 

1  During  the  remainder  of  this  chapter  the  author  is  wholly  dependent  upon  a 
century  of  fine  scientific  work  on  the  synoptic  problem,  in  which  he  has  had  no  part. 
Other  men  have  labored,  and  he  has  entered  into  their  labors.  The  net  result  of  the 
century's  work  has  been  given  in  Professor  Wernle's  book.  Die  Quellen  des  Lebens 
Jesu.  It  is  from  this  book,  together  with  Professor  Bousset's  Was  ivissen  wir  von 
Jesus  f  that  the  substance  of  what  follows  in  this  chapter  has  been  derived. 


334    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

In  the  year  90  of  the  first  century  the  Jew  Josephus 
writes  his  Aniiquities,  in  which  he  tells  of  the  murder  of 
James  "the  brother  of  the  so-called  Christ."'  This  is  the 
sole  testimony  from  a  Jewish  historian  of  the  time  of  Jesus. 
Another  famous  passage^  is  a  Christian  fabrication.  About 
the  year  120  we  have  the  first  definite  testimony  from  a 
Roman  historian.  In  his  Annals^  Tacitus  gives  an  account 
of  the  first  Neronian  persecution  of  the  sect  of  Christians, 
"whose  founder,  Christ,  was  condemned  in  the  reign  of 
Tiberius  by  the  procurator  Pontius  Pilate."  So  much  for 
the  non-Christian  narratives  concerning  Jesus — brief  mention 
indeed.  Some  explanation  may  be  given  for  the  scantiness 
of  the  notices.  But  the  fact  is  still  somewhat  distressing, 
although  it  need  not  be  disconcerting.  We  have  only  Chris- 
tian witness  to  Jesus,  which  should  be  all  the  more  sharply 
and  rigidly  tested  on  that  account. 

Let  us  interrogate  the  oldest  Christian  informant,  the 
apostle  Paul.  We  learn  from  Paul,  however,  very  little  con- 
cerning the  person  and  life  of  Jesus.  He  values  Jesus  not 
lower  than  the  highest,  but  he  does  not  present  much  about 
his  career.  Jesus'  prohibition  of  divorce,*  Jesus'  word  con- 
cerning the  right  of  the  minister  to  maintenance  from  the 
community,^  the  narrative  of  the  last  meal  on  the  night  of 
the  betrayal,^  the  summing-up  of  the  witness  for  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus' — purely  occasional,  almost  incidental,  com- 
munications to  his  churches;  nothing  documentary  concern- 
ing Jesus  himself — this  is  all.  Paul  may  have  orally  given 
to  his  converts  much  more  than  we  know  of.  But  of  this  we 
are  not  sure.  Paul  did  not  lay  much  weight  upon  what  he 
received  from  tradition.  According  to  his  own  beliefs,  he 
obtained  his  gospel  from  divine  "revelation,"  not  from  human 
tradition.      And  he  had  good  reasons  of  his  own  for  assert- 

IXXI,  9,  1.  3XV,  44.  59:14.  715:4  ff. 

2XVIII,  3, 3.  n  Cor.  7:10.  611:23ff. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      335 

ing  his  self-dependence,  and  his  independence  of  tradition. 
The  Jesus  whom  he  preached  is  the  Son  of  God  who  came 
down  from  heaven  in  order  to  die  and  to  rise  again  for  our 
justification.  Everything  depends  upon  the  main  features  of 
this  drama  of  history ;  compared  with  it,  all  else  is  subordinate. 
Not  the  teacher,  not  the  wonder-worker,  not  the  friend  of 
publicans  and  sinners,  not  the  antagonist  of  Pharisees,  is  the 
important  thing  to  Paul.  The  crucified  and  risen  Son  of 
God  is  all  in  all.  It  follows  naturally  from  the  essence  of 
the  Pauline  gospel  that  this  historically  oldest  witness,  which 
we  know,  is  the  scantiest  source  of  all  for  our  own  knowledge 
of  Jesus. 

Present-day  investigation  of  Jesus  has  been  concentrated 
upon  the  four  gospels.  We  have  received  these  gospels  from 
the  hands  of  tradition ;  according  to  tradition,  two  gospels 
are  by  Matthew  and  John,  who  were  apostles ;  two  others,  by 
disciples  and  companions  of  apostles — Mark  the  companion 
of  Peter,  Luke  of  Paul.  Thus  Irenseus  and  Justin  Martyr. 
Mark  and  Luke  are  not  of  apostolic  origin.  Whether  the  first 
and  fourth  gospels  have  apostles  for  their  authors  is  a  ques- 
tion which  these  gospels  themselves  can  answer  more  surely. 

We  pass,  then,  to  ask  the  gospels  themselves  concerning 
their  authors  and  origin.  What  we  can  gain  by  way  of 
answer  is  not  much.  No  single  gospel  names  the  name  of  its 
author.  As  to  the  gospels  of  Matthew  and  Mark,  there  is  no 
statement  in  them  which  gives  us  a  hint  as  to  who  their 
authors  are.  Were  it  not  for  the  tradition  concerning  their 
authors,  no  man  would  ever  arrive  at  the  thought  that  the 
first  gospel  was  written  by  Matthew,  the  second  by  Mark. 
The  author  of  the  third  gospel  begins  by  telling  us  the  plan 
and  purpose  of  his  gospel.^  The  third  gospel  is  a  relatively 
late  work,  preceded  by  a  longer  literary  development.  Its 
author  does  not  belong  to  eyewitnesses — probably  not  even 

1  Luke  1 : 1-4. 


336    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

to  those  who  took  down  immediate  narratives  of  eyewitnesses. 
He  distinguishes  three  stages:  (a)  eyewitnesses  who  orally 
narrate  what  they  have  seen  and  heard;  (6)  the  "many"  who 
seek  to  fix  the  oral  tradition  of  eyewitnesses  in  coherent 
expositions,  with  more  or  less  skill,  yet  incomplete,  inaccurate, 
in  poor  arrangement;  (c)  finally  he  himself,  who,  apparently 
using  the  works  of  his  predecessors,  does  his  best  to  produce 
a  narrative  that  shall  be  complete,  accurate,  and  properly 
connected.  Hence  this  evangelist  himself  assigns  us  the  task 
of  finding  out  what  we  can  concerning  his  predecessors  and 
sources. 

The  self-witness  of  the  fourth  gospel  is  peculiar.  The 
words,  "We  beheld  his  glory,'"  in  the  prologue,  lead  to  the 
question  as  to  who  it  is  that  speaks — whether  an  individual, 
whether  a  company  of  people,  whether  personal  eyewitnesses 
or  enthusiastic  believers.  The  narrative  is  anonymous  and 
objective.  Not  until  the  thirteenth  chapter  is  there  mention 
made  of  "the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved,"  thus  introducing 
in  a  striking  manner  a  person  hitherto  unknown  to  us — the 
favorite  disciple,  the  confidant  of  Jesus,  who  stands  in  the 
foreground  of  the  narrative  from  now  on.  But  often  as  he 
is  mentioned,  he  is  not  the  main  person,  save  once,^  but  a 
figure  which  recedes  behind  Peter,  the  main  person^  other- 
wise known  to  us.  This  exception  is  of  much  importance: 
While  Peter  denied,  the  favorite  disciple  remained  faithful 
under  the  shadow  of  the  cross,  received  the  testament  of  the 
dying  Jesus,  and  witnessed  to  the  truth  of  his  death.  We 
immediately  learn  here  that  the  favorite  disciple  is  to  be 
the  witness,  the  authority,  under  which  the  tradition  of  the 
fourth  gospel  is  to  be  placed.  But  in  that  case  the  whole 
purpose  of  this  subordination  of  Peter  to  the  favorite  disciple 
now  grows  clear.      The  main  point  of  interest  is  not  items 

1  John  1:14.  2 19;  23  £f.,  35. 

313:  23  ff. ;  18:  15;  20: 10;  21 :  7  f . ;  21 :  20-23.  These  passages  should  be  carefully 
examined  with  a  view  to  the  relation  of  primacy  between  Peter  and  John. 


Sources  op  the  Life  of  Jesus  337 

about  the  two  disciples;  it  is  the  tradition.  The  tradition 
with  the  authority  of  the  favorite  disciple  is  to  be  co-ordi- 
nate with,  if  not  superior  to,  the  tradition  founded  on  the 
authority  of  Peter.  While,  however,  the  earlier  evangelical 
tradition  seeks  to  win  confidence  without  reliance  on  author- 
ity, but  simply  by  the  plain,  objective  character  of  its  nar- 
ratives— the  informants  not  appearing  at  all — this  younger 
branch  of  tradition  provides  audience  and  validity  for  itself 
by  constantly  advancing  an  authority. 

But  this  self-witness  becomes  very  complicated  on  account  of 
the  closing  words  of  the  twenty-first  chapter.  A  number  of  men, 
the  "  we,"  assm-e  us  that  the  favorite  disciple  is  precisely  the  disci- 
ple who  bears  witness  to  these  things,  and  has  written  this,  and  we 
know  that  Iiis  witness  is  true.  To  be  sure,  the  whole  twenty-first 
chapter  has  the  appearance  of  an  addition  to  the  gospel,  which 
closed  with  20:  30  f.  It  has  been  supposed  that  the  entire  twenty- 
first  chapter  was  the  work  of  another  author  after  the  death  of  the 
favorite  disciple.  But  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  style  and  manner 
are  the  same  as  those  of  the  rest  of  the  gospel.  Besides,  the  "  we" 
themselves  tell  us  that  the  favorite  disciple  wrote  "  these  things," 
i.  e.,  the  twenty-first  chapter  also.  The  idea  is  not  that  there  are 
two  authors,  an  earlier  and  a  later,  but  that  the  authority  of  the 
favorite  disciple  and  author  of  the  whole  shall  be  fortified  at  the  end 
by  the  authority  of  the  "  we."  But  this  procedure  seems  strange  to 
us.  An  apostolic  witness,  the  authority  of  the  fourth  gospel,  and 
yet  his  name  does  not  suffice,  but  requires  the  witness  of  the  "we" 
who  know  and  declare  that  the  testimony  of  the  witness  is  true! 
Finally,  we  are  enthely  in  the  dark  as  to  the  names  of  the  witnesses 
and  of  the  "we."  1 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  fourth  gospel  purports  to  be  of 
apostolic  derivation  and  authority  in  an  entirely  different 
manner  from  the  first  three  gospels.  It  is  also  evident  that 
the  self-witness  in  the  fourth  gospel  raises  more  riddles  than 
it  solves.  Besides,  the  manner  of  this  self-witness  awakens 
the  strongest  doubts  and  suspicions,  instead  of  convincing 
one  of  the  trustworthiness,  of  the  gospel. 

1  Weenle. 


338    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

The  difference  between  the  fourth  gospel  and  the  synoptics 
is  apparent  to  anyone  who  has  read  the  gospels  at  all  atten- 
tively. But  it  is  greater  than  at  first  appears.  There  are  two 
different  Jesus-pictures,  the  synoptic  and  the  Johannine. 
We  shall,  first,  present  these  differences  and,  secondly,  try  to 
account  for  them. 

(a)  The  material  which  the  two  groups,  the  synoptic  and 
the  Johannine,  have  in  common  is  scanty.  Much  at  both  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  the  evangelical  history  is  common. 
But  between  the  beginning  and  the  end  the  two  groups 
seldom  coincide.  On  inspection  we  find  that  the  differences 
in  the  common  material  are  very  great.  (&)  Among  the 
differences,  that  of  the  chronology  of  the  two  groups  is  strik- 
ing. The  synoptic  narrative  reckons  with  one  feast  of 
the  Passover;  the  Johannine,  with  three.^  According  to  the 
Johannine,  Jesus'  ministry  lasted  three  years;  according  to 
the  synoptic,  scarcely  one.  So,  too,  the  day  of  Jesus'  death 
is  different  in  the  two  groups:  in  the  synoptic  the  15th  Nisan  f 
in  the  Johannine,  the  14th.*  Nor  do  they  agree  as  to  time 
and  mode  of  the  beginning  of  Jesus'  ministry,*  (c)  To  dif- 
ferences of  time  must  be  added  those  of  place.  According 
to  the  synoptic  narrative,  Galilee  is  the  theater  of  the  entire 
work  of  Jesus,  save  a  trip  through  Perea  and  a  little  while  in 
Jerusalem  before  his  death;  according  to  the  Johannine, 
Jerusalem  is  the  center  of  his  operations  during  the  whole 
time.  The  Johannine  also  refers  to  a  stay  of  Jesus  in  Sama- 
ria,^ for  missionary  purposes;  but  in  the  synoptics  Jesus 
forbids  his  disciples  to  preach  there.*^  (cZ)  In  comparing  the 
stories  at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end  of  the  two  groups,  we 
detect  the  greatest  diversities  in  the  material  common  to  both. 
John  the  Baptist  is  a  different  sort  of  man  in  the  two:   in 

'John  2: 13;  6:  4;  13:1.  *C/.  Mark  1 :  14  and  John  3:  24. 

2  Mark  14 :  12.  5  John  4  :  4-42. 

3  John  18 :  28.  6  Matt.  10 :  5  ;  cf.  Luke  9 :  53. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      339 

the  synoptics,  primarily  a  preacher  of  penitence,  prophet  of 
judgment,  who  arouses  the  mass  of  the  people,  also  prophet 
of  the  coming  Messiah;  in  John,  simply  and  only  witness  to 
Jesus,  sent  into  the  world  to  point  men  to  Jesus,  to  pro- 
claim the  divine  sonship  and  pre-existence  of  Jesus,  and  his 
atoning  death.  And  yet,  according  to  the  synoptics,  John  is 
in  prison,  doubting  whether  Jesus  is  the  one  who  was  to  come 
or  not.^  The  baptism  of  Jesus,  accordingly,  has  different 
significance  in  the  two  groups:  according  to  the  synoptics,  it 
was  Jesus  who  learned  there  the  certainty  of  his  messianic 
calling;  according  to  the  fourth  gospel,  it  was  John  the 
Baptist  who  learned  it.  The  descent  of  the  Spirit  on  Jesus 
is  the  sign  for  the  Baptist  by  which  he  recognizes  the  mes- 
sianity  of  Jesus.^  It  is  only  for  this  reason  that  the  evan- 
gelist mentions  the  baptism  of  Jesus.  When  we  turn  to 
consider  the  history  of  the  passion  in  the  two  groups,  we  find 
that,  according  to  the  synoptics,  the  whole  narrative  of  the 
death  of  Jesus  and  of  the  discovery  of  the  empty  tomb  rests 
on  the  witness  of  three  women:  Mary  Magdalene,  Mary  the 
mother  of  James  the  less  and  of  Joses,  and  Salome  (whom 
Matthew  describes  as  mother  of  Zebedee,  while  Luke  replaces 
her  with  Johanna).'  For  the  disciples  have  all  fled,  and  are 
scattered;  had  it  not  been  for  the  women  looking  on  from  a 
distance,  the  Christian  community  would  have  known  nothing 
of  the  particulars  of  the  death  of  Jesus.  But,  according  to 
the  fourth  gospel,  Mary  the  mother  of  Jesus,  her  sister,  Mary 
the  wife  of  Cleophas,  and  Mary  Magdalene,  and  along  with 
them  the  favorite  disciple,  stood,  not  afar  off,  but  by  the  cross 
of  Jesus.*  Here,  these  four  persons  are  the  witnesses  in  the 
tradition  of  the  death  of  Jesus.  Mary  Magdalene  alone 
remains  from  the  synoptic  group:  she  alone  is  mentioned 
afterward  as  witness  of  the  empty  grave;  the  new  feature  is 
the  presence  of  the  mother  of  Jesus  and  of  the  favorite  dis- 

1  Matt.  11 : 1  ff.         2  John  1:33.         3  Mark  15:  40;  16: 1.         *  John  19 :  25,  35. 


340    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

ciple.  With  such  diverse  groups  of  witnesses,  the  content  of 
the  witness — the  last  words  of  Jesus — different  as  it  is,  need 
cause  no  surprise.  Much  prominence  is  given  to  the  miracles 
of  Jesus  in  the  fourth  gospel  and  the  synoptics.  And  yet 
the  difference  between  the  two  sets  of  narratives  is  great. 
The  most  frequent  miraculous  deeds  of  Jesus,  the  healing  of 
the  possessed,  John  knows  nothing  about.  What  he  nar- 
rates are  pure  miracles  of  omnipotence.  The  miracles  of  the 
synoptic  Jesus,  moreover,  issue  from  his  human  sympathy; 
the  Johannine  Jesus  did  his  miracles  as  signs  of  his  divine 
power.' 

All  the  differences  mentioned  so  far  are  striking  and  note- 
worthy enough.  But  they  are  of  little  moment  when  com- 
pared with  the  main  difference:  the  wholly  different  character 
of  the  discourses  of  Jesus.  Whenever  did  any  two  men  in 
the  world  speak  more  diversely  than  the  synoptic  and  the 
Johannine  Jesus?  This  may  be  seen,  first  of  all,  in  the 
form  of  the  discourses.  The  Johannine  Jesus  may  utter 
two  or  three  sayings  that  are  like  the  words  of  the  Mountain 
Sermon;  parables  like  the  synoptic  parables  there  are  none. 
Where  is  there  a  synoptic  parable  like  these:  "I  am  the  door 
of  the  sheep,"  "I  am  the  good  shepherd,"  "I  am  the  true 
vine,"  "I  am  the  light  of  the  world"?  At  bottom,  the 
whole  synoptic  preaching  of  Jesus  has  ever  the  same  content: 
the  promise  of  the  speedy  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
and  of  the  judgment,  and  the  requirement  that  his  hearers 
shall  do  the  will  of  God  and  be  prepared  by  repentance  for 
the  great  change.  Everything  else,  even  the  message  of 
God's  fatherly  love  and  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  is  joined 
to  this  promise  and  this  requirement.  So,  too,  Jesus'  con- 
troversies with  his  opponents  and  with  the  Pharisees  revolve 
around  this  main  question :  What  constitutes  the  doing  of  the 
will  of  God?     However  certain  it  may  be  that  the  synoptic 

1£.  fir.,  2: 11;  11:  4. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  341 

Jesus  held  that  he  was  the  Messiah,  he  is  yet  reticent  con- 
cerning his  messianic  mystery,  and  puts  in  the  foreground 
his  cause  instead  of  his  person:  God's  kingdom  and  God's 
will.  The  great  picture  of  the  future,  the  energy  of  will 
directed  entirely  and  absolutely  to  this  future,  remains  the 
synoptic  center  of  the  whole  preaching  of  Jesus.  How 
different  it  is  in  the  Johannine  gospel !  Instead  of  the 
promise  of  the  coming  kingdom  of  God  and  the  judgment, 
the  message  of  the  Son  of  God  and  Redeemer  who  has 
already  appeared;  instead  of  the  requirement  to  do  God's 
will  and,  by  purity  of  heart  and  brotherly  love,  to  be  pre- 
pared for  the  kingdom  of  God,  the  command  to  believe  on 
the  Son  of  God  who  has  come  from  heaven;'  in  brief,  the 
perso7i  everywhere  instead  of  the  cause.  Jesus  himself  is 
the  content  of  all  his  discourses.  The  eye  is  turned  back- 
ward to  the  pre-existence  of  Jesus,  to  his  coming  from 
heaven,  instead  of  forward  to  parousia.  Instead  of  the 
kingdom  of  God,  Jesus  himself !  Hence,  from  now  on  it  is 
not  good  and  evil,  but  believing  and  unbelieving,  which  are 
the  decisive  opposites  before  God  and  man.  Although  much 
is  said  in  the  farewell  discourses  concerning  brotherly  love 
and  keeping  the  commandments  as  marks  of  true  disciple- 
ship,  yet  faith  is  presupposed.  These  are  the  cardinal 
differences  of  the  discourses.  Still  many  others  might  be 
mentioned.^  There  is  the  strange  way  in  which  Jesus  spoke 
to  the  people  of  Galilee  of  eating  his  flesh  and  drinking  his 
blood ^  more  than  a  year  before  he  ate  the  farewell  supper 
with  his  disciples.  There,  too,  is  the  way  that  the  discourses 
of  Jesus  attach  importance  to  the  spirit  as  the  future  repre- 
sentative of  Jesus  and  as  the  condition  of  all  new  life  and 
knowledge:*  while  the  synoptic  Jesus,   apart  from  a  brief 

iJohn6:29. 

2C/.  John  2:19  ff.;  3:14ff.;  6:51;  7:33;  etc.,  with  Mark  8:  31. 

3  John  6 :  51-63.  *3:5il.;  8:38f.;  11:16;  etc. 


342    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

sentence/  does  not  discourse  upon  the  spirit  at  all.  But  all 
this  is  not  the  main  thing,  which  is  the  complete  absorption 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  by  the  Son  of  God  who  came  from 
heaven,  and  the  change  of  the  requirement  connected  there- 
with, to  do  the  ivill  of  God,  into  the  requirement  to  have 
"faith." 

The  great  difference  in  the  attitude  of  Jesus  to  his  people, 
to  the  Jews,  follows  from  this  cardinal  difference  between 
the  two  groups.  In  the  synoptics  we  see  the  publicans  and 
sinners,  the  Pharisees,  the  scribes,  members  of  the  Sanhe- 
drin,  and  the  multitude  of  the  people.  Jesus  occupied  a 
position  of  his  own  to  all  these  groups.  He  is  the  friend  of 
publicans  and  sinners,  the  foe  of  Pharisees,  the  rival  of  the 
scribes,  the  preacher  of  repentance,  physician  and  comforter, 
in  one  person,  to  the  people.  In  the  Johannine  gospel,  on 
the  other  hand,  publicans  and  sinners  have  vanished,  the 
scribe  likewise;  the  Pharisees  and  high -priests  remain. 
The  most  frequent  designations  are  "the  Jews"  and  the 
"Pharisees;"  but  the  Pharisees  are  no  longer  those  who 
are  zealous  for  the  law,  they  are  simply  the  kernel  of  the 
Judaism  that  is  unbelieving,  and  hostile  to  Jesus.  For  John 
there  is  only  a  single  party-forming  criterion:  faith  in  Jesus 
the  Son  of  God,  or  unbelief;  other  differences  he  does  not 
cognize.  There  is  no  controversy,  therefore,  concerning  the 
will  of  God  and  the  law.  In  the  synoptics,  conscience  is 
opposed  to  artificiality,  veraciousness  to  hypocrisy,  morality 
to  cult,  love  and  humanness  to  religious  egoism  and  con- 
ceitedness;  but  in  John  it  is  simply  and  only  that  faith  is 
opposed  to  unbelief.  Since,  however,  the  Jewish  people  as 
a  whole  persisted  in  this  unbelief  and,  in  this  unbelief, 
finally  crucified  Jesus,  Jesus'  personal  attitude  to  the  Jews 
must  likewise  be  different.  They  confront  each  other  from 
the  very  beginning'^  as  foes.     Instead  of  the  love   of  the 

1  Mark  13: 11.  2John2:24. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      343 

synoptic  Jesus,  seeking  and  saving  till  death,  there  is  a 
hostile  feeling  in  the  Johannine  Jesus,  heartless  and  cold. 
He  tells  them  openly  that  they  are  not  Grod's  and  not  Abra- 
ham's children,  but  the  devil's,'  and  in  the  high  priestly 
prayer  he  does  not  pray  God  for  the  world,  but  only  for 
believers.^  How  different  his  attitude  to  the  Greeks  who 
pressed  in  to  see  him  at  the  feast,^  from  that  to  the  Jews! 
The  Jews  for  the  devil,  the  Greeks  for  Jesus  and  for  God ! 
We  are  reminded  at  once  of  the  Greek  Logos,  mentioned  in 
the  prologue,*  working  in  the  wide,  wide  world.  But  with 
that  thought  we  have  entirely  left  the  horizon  of  the  synoptic 
Jesus. 

Thus  the  differences  between  the  Johannine  and  the 
synoptic  narratives  are  great  and  manifold.  The  number 
already  mentioned  may  be  easily  increased  by  any  reader  of 
the  Bible.  But  may  they  be  harmonized  ?  To  some  extent. 
We  read  in  the  synoptics  some  things  that  are  akin  to  the 
Johannine  account,  and  it  may  be  that  the  author  of  the 
fourth  gospel  sought  to  supplement  the  synoptic  tradition 
by  the  tradition  of  the  favorite  disciple.  So,  at  all  events, 
the  harmonists  have  ever  told  us.  There  is  some  synoptic 
material  that  is  akin  to  the  Johannine.^  Likewise  much 
that  is  in  John  may  be  treated  as  supplementary  to  the 
synoptic  tradition.  E.  g.,  the  Galilean  fishermen  leave 
their  calling  and  follow  Jesus  without  having  previously 
heard  a  word  about  him.  May  not  John,  chap.  1,  be  the 
key  to  this  remarkable  performance?  May  not  John's 
narrative  supplement  the  account  in  Luke  10:38  ff.  ?  Again, 
compare  the  account  of  Jesus  before  Caiaphas,  Matt.,  chap. 
26,  with  that  of  Jesus  before  Annas,  John,  chap.  18. 

Such  attempts  to  harmonize  the  two  groups,  the  Johannine 

iChap.8.  217:9.  312:20.  n:9ff. 

5See  Mark  14:2;  Matt. 23:37;  11:27;  Mark  5:34;  Matt.8:10;  Mark  6:5;  Matt. 
10:32f. ;  Mark  4:llf.  As  to  what  was  said  concerning  the  doing  of  the  will  of  God, 
compare  John  17 :  7. 


344   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

and  the  synoptic,  will  never  cease  to  impress  many  Bible 
readers.  Yet  they  come  to  a  point  at  last  where  all  such 
attempts  fail,  and  where  the  sober  sense  for  truth  rebels.  If 
the  synoptics  narrate  impossible  miraculous  stories,  what 
argument  follows  therefrom  in  favor  of  changing  the  water 
into  wine,  or  of  the  resuscitation  of  Lazarus  after  he  was  dead 
four  days?  That  the  three  synoptists  do  not  utter  a  syllable 
concerning  these  greatest  miracles  of  all  that  Jesus  did, 
suffices  of  itself  to  destroy  all  credit  of  the  Johannine  tradi- 
tion on  the  subject.^  Or,  let  one  take  up  the  narrative  of  the 
crucifixion.  One  must  choose  between  the  testimony  of  the 
three  women  whom  Mark  names,  and  the  testimony  of  the 
favorite  disciple  and  the  mother  of  Jesus,  of  whose  presence 
at  the  cross  the  synoptic  tradition  knows  nothing.  Addition 
and  combination  are  excluded  here  where  each  series  of 
witnesses  hears  entirely  different  words  from  Jesus. 

But  especially  must  all  harmonizing  efforts  fail  when  we 
come  to  the  preaching  of  Jesus.  Jesus  simply  did  not  speak 
both  in  the  synoptic  and  the  Johannine  way.  He  spoke 
either  as  a  layman,  a  poet,  a  prophet,  or  as  a  theologian.  He 
either  bore  witness  concerning  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  the 
will  of  God,  or  always  concerning  his  own  person.  He  looked 
either  forward  to  his  coming  again,  or  backward  to  his  exist- 
ence in  heaven.  He  preached  either  that  doing  the  will  of 
God  is  the  only  way  into  the  kingdom  of  God,  or  that  all 
depends  upon  faith  in  his  divine  sonship.  Let  the  reader 
ask  himself  seriously  whether  the  synoptic  Jesus  could  have 
said  to  the  people  of  Jerusalem,  "I  am  the  light  of  the  world,"" 
and,  conversely,  the  Johannine  Jesus,  to  Nicodemus,  "Why 
callest  thou  me  good?  there  is  none  good  but  one,  that  is, 
God."^     And  if  importance  be  attached  to  faith  in  the  synop- 

1  Luke's  parable,  16:  19-31,  tells  us  that,  even  if  Lazarus  should  rise  from  the 
dead,  the  unbelieving  Jews  would  not  repent.  This,  probably,  is  the  germ  of  the 
Lazarus  story  in  John.    It  translates  Luke's  parable  into  history. 

2John8:12.  3MarklO:18. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  345 

tics,  it  is  without  exception  confidence  in  the  power  of  God 
working  through  Jesus  that  is  meant,  and  not  the  confession 
of  faith  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God  who  came  down  from 
heaven.  It  is  merely  the  word  "faith,"  sundered  from  all 
its  content,  that  makes  the  comparison  on  the  part  of  the 
so-called  harmonists  possible.  The  word  is  the  same,  the 
thing  itself  is  as  different  as  possible ;  but  the  thing  is  the 
matter  of  importance. 

All  such  efforts  at  mediation  between  John  and  the  synop- 
tists  are  shattered  on  the  simple  facts  of  the  case.  The 
historical  narrative,  the  preaching,  the  Christ-picture,  are 
different.  In  the  last  analysis  the  difference  in  the  Christ- 
portrait  reduces  itself  to  the  simple  formula :  here  man — there 
God.  In  the  synoptics,  the  man  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  intrusted 
by  God  with  the  messianic  calling  and  with  the  power  of  the 
spirit — the  man  Jesus  who,  even  in  moments  of  supreme 
exaltation  and  consciousness  of  God,  remained  conscious  of 
this  great  distance  from  God  ("no  one  is  good  but  God"); 
who  also,  like  every  other  son  of  man,  bows  in  deepest  rever- 
ence in  prayer  to  the  Father.^  In  John,  the  God  through 
whom  the  world  was  made;  God  with  God  before  the  begin- 
ning of  all  things,"  who,  even  after  he  had  come  down  from 
heaven  for  our  redemption,  constantly  remains  conscious  of 
his  divine  origin  and  divine  dignity;  reveals  the  power  of 
God  in  miracles  of  omnipotence ;  even  in  prayer  prays  not  for 
himself,  but  for  others;^  voluntarily  submits  to  death,  since 
he  has  power  not  to  die;^  and  gloriously  returns  to  the  Father 
from  the  grave,  after  a  disciple  confesses :  "  My  Lord  and  my 
God."^  Any  attempt  to  add  together  and  harmonize  this  and 
the  synoptic  Jesus  can  only  serve  to  the  obliteration  and  de- 
struction of  that  which  is  full  of  strength  and  power  in  each. 

We  are  thus  confronted  with  the  necessity  of  making  a 
choice:    Either  the  synoptics  —  or  John.     And  as  historical 

1  Matt.  11:25.  2Johnl:ltf.  311:42.  *  10:18.  5  20:28. 


346    The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Keligion 

source,  John  must  surrender  the  field  to  the  synoptics.  Jesus 
was  such  a  one  as  the  synoptics  delineate,  and  not  the  one 
introduced  by  John. 

Not  that  this  is  the  last  word  concerning  the  Johannine 
tradition.  In  and  of  itself  it  is  conceivable  that  single  old 
and  valuable  memorabilia  may  be  preserved  in  a  quite 
secondary  historical  source.  Concerning  this  point  opinion 
varies  today  even  among  investigators  who  agree  in  giving 
historic  preference  to  the  synoptic  gospels  rather  than  to  the 
Johannine.  Into  this  matter  we  do  not  need  to  enter. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that,  as  between  the  synoptic  and  the 
Johannine  Christ,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  which  is  the 
historical. 

But  what  is  the  explanation  of  the  difference  between  the 
two?  How  did  such  a  different,  such  a  new,  evangelical 
picture  arise  by  the  side  of  the  older  synoptic  picture  ?  May 
one  gather  up  the  threads  which  pass  from  the  latter  to  the 
former  ? 

(a)  Between  the  synoptics  and  the  fourth  gospel  there 
comes  in  the  gospel  which  Paul  preached,  and  deposited  in 
his  letters.  It  is  the  great  message  of  the  Son  of  God  whom 
God  sent  in  love  from  heaven  to  earth  in  order  to  redeem  and 
reconcile  man  by  his  death  and  resurrection,  and,  accordingly, 
the  message  that  faith  in  the  Son  of  God  alone  saves  us,  and 
already  assures  us  even  now  of  eternal  life ;  united  therewith 
are  the  powerful  propositions  concerning  sin  and  grace,  the 
spirit,  the  ordinances,  election.  John  approached  the  subject 
from  this  Pauline  preaching.  It  is  from  this  standpoint  that 
he  considers  Jesus.  It  is  inconceivable  to  John  that  Jesus 
should  have  thought  and  spoken  of  himself  otherwise  than 
as  the  Pauline  disciple  believed.  Accordingly,  we  should 
have  the  deep,  weighty  thoughts  of  Paul  in  John's  gospel  as 
the  words  of  Jesus  himself.  (6)  We  are  on  Greek  soil ;  the 
Greek  atmosphere  envelops  us.     This  is  evident  at  once  from 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  347 

the  prologue.  In  the  beginning  was  the  Logos,  the  divine 
reason,  and  the  Logos  was  with  God,  and  (a)  God  was  the 
Logos,  Jesus  Christ  the  embodiment  of  the  Logos,  the  incar- 
nate reason.  The  light  of  the  Logos  first  shone  in  the  great 
world  of  the  gentiles  and  the  Jews,  hindered  all  the  while  by 
darkness  and  ignorance.  Then  it  becomes  man  in  Jesus  in 
order  to  reveal  itself  visibly  and  tangibly  to  man.  The  deity 
of  Christ,  manifest  everywhere  in  the  fourth  gospel,  is  also 
Greek.  Men  are  to  honor  the  son  as  they  honor  the  father. ' 
In  all  this  the  gospel  goes  farther  than  Paul.  The  gospel  of 
the  Jew  Paul  took  on  the  full  meaning  of  a  revealed  God 
first  on  Greek  soil,  (c)  Finally,  however — and  this  is  the 
main  point — the  evangelical  portrait  of  the  fourth  gospel 
rests  on  an  overmastering  _/9e?"so«aZ  impression  of  the  redeem- 
ing power  of  Jesus  himself  This  evangelist — so  much  is 
evident  in  every  line — found  God  through  Jesus,  and,  with 
God,  life  and  full  satisfaction."  What  Jesus  said  in  the 
gospel  is  at  bottom  a  full,  jubilant  confession  of  what  Jesus 
had  become  to  the  disciple  who  wrote  the  gospel.  First  of 
all  and  most  of  all,  Jesus  was  to  this  author  himself  the  way, 
the  truth,  and  the  life,  the  lamb  of  God  who  bore  his  sins, 
the  water  of  life  and  the  bread  of  life,  the  good  shepherd  and 
the  vine,  the  light  of  the  world,  the  resurrection  and  the  life ; 
and  because  Jesus  was  this  to  him,  it  was  self-evident  to  him 
that  Jesus  had  said  all  this  about  himself.  The  whole 
world-historical  power  of  the  fourth  gospel  rests  on  the  gen- 
uine and  enthusiastic  thankfulness,  which,  because  genuine 
and  living,  passes  over  involuntarily  to  the  reader.  We  do 
not  learn  from  this  book  what  in  particular  Jesus  was,  how 
he  lived,  what  he  said.  But  we  learn  the  impression  Jesus 
made  upon  one  of  the  greatest  of  his  disciples.  And  this 
impression  may  be  set  forth  in  the  simple  statement  that  there 
are  two  kinds  of  lives  and  two  kinds  of  worlds:  with  Jesus  or 

15:23;  20:28;  14:9;  5:18;  10:33.  2iO:ll. 


34:8    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

without  Jesus ;  and  that  he  who  has  Jesus  has  God,  and,  with 
him,  all  things. 

What  follows  from  the  exclusion  of  the  fourth  gospel  from 
the  series  of  sources?  Luther,  the  Pauline  disciple,  and 
Schleiermacher,  the  philosopher  and  defender  of  religion, 
subordinated  the  synoptics  in  worth  and  content  to  the  fourth 
gospel.  The  preference  of  modern  Christians  for  John  is 
easily  understood.  Do  not  the  synoptics  contain  much  that 
is  foreign  and  unintelligible  to  us:  belief  in  demons  and 
miracles,  signs  of  Jewish  limitations  and  narrowness, 
end-of-the-world  sentiments?  Yet  we  gain  rather  than  lose 
by  the  subordination  of  John.  We  gain  God  and  Jesus 
himself  really,  and  the  sense  for  the  main  thing  on  which  all 
else  depends  before  God  and  eternity,  (a)  God,  the  Father- 
God,  is  central,  although  all  the  synoptics  tell  about  Jesus. 
For  Jesus  himself  it  is  God  that  is  the  main  concern:  God's 
kingdom,  God's  judgment,  God's  will,  God's  fatherly  love. 
Everywhere  and  always  he  points  men  from  himself  to  the 
Father,  It  is  not  saying  "Lord,  Lord,"  but  doing  the  will 
of  God,  that  leads  into  the  kingdom.  "Why  callest  thou  me 
good,  there  is  none  good  but  one,  that  is,  God."  It  is  God 
alone,  and  not  Jesus,  who  decides  concerning  one's  place  in 
the  kingdom  of  God.  Jesus  prays  to  the  Father,  Lord  of 
heaven  and  earth,  the  Father-God:  "Father,  not  as  I  will, 
but  as  thou  wilt."  This  Father-God  speaks  to  us  in  sunshine 
and  shower,  in  the  lily's  glory  and  the  bird's  care-free  life,  in 
all  providence  and  vicissitudes  of  our  earthly  lot,  in  Jesus' 
victory  over  demons,  in  Jesus'  words,  in  Jesus'  death.  Upon 
the  whole  life  of  Jesus  is  written:  soli  Deo  gloria,  (b)  And 
Jesus  himself  belongs  entirely  on  the  side  of  humanity. 
Grant  that  he  was  Messiah,  Son  of  God,  King  of  the  king- 
dom of  God;  and  grant  that  his  intimacy  with  the  heart  of 
God  was  incomparable — still,  with  all  this,  he  never  ceased 
to  be  man,  real  and  full  man,  creature,  who  bows  with  us  in 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  349 

deepest  reverence  before  the  Alone  Holy,  the  Alone  Good. 
And  he  was  tempted  like  ourselves;  he  struggled;  he  asked 
and  leai-ned ;  he  believed,  hoped,  and  prayed ;  he  rejoiced  with 
exceeding  great  joy,  and  was  sorrowful  unto  death.  Dying 
was  a  grievous  and  bitter  thing  to  him,  so  much  so  that  h© 
hoped  almost  to  the  end  that  there  might  be  some  turn  in 
affairs  by  which  he  might  be  saved;  and  yet  he  kept  his  hold 
upon  God  in  filial  fidelity  of  faith,  (c)  All  this  we  have  only 
in  the  synoptics,  not  in  John.  But  the  most  important  matter 
of  all  for  us  is  the  answer  to  the  great  question:  What  is  the 
main  thing  in  the  sight  of  God?  What  is  it  that  decides 
concerning  life  and  death?  It  is  at  this  point  that  John 
leaves  us  entirely  in  the  lurch.  His  ever-recurring  answer 
is :  Believe  in  the  Son  of  God,  who  came  down  from  heaven ; 
believe  that  Jesus  is  this  Son  of  God.  This  answer  has 
dominated  Christianity  even  to  this  day — not  to  its  advan- 
tage, for  one  can  affirm  it  without  getting  a  hair's-breadth 
nearer  to  God,  without  being  the  slightest  vestige  a  better 
man.  The  synoptic  Jesus  answers  differently.  It  is  he  who 
does  the  will  of  God  that  enters  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  is 
he  whom  Jesus  calls  mother,  brother,  sister.  What  is  this 
will  of  God?  The  answer  is  clear:  uprightness,  brotherly 
love,  humility,  seeking  after  the  kingdom  of  God,  Whoever 
gives  his  life  to  doing  the  will  of  God  has  set  foot  upon  the 
right  path.  The  new  life  dawns  which  Jesus  knows  that  he 
was  sent  to  awaken  and  protect. 

We  may  now  turn  more  definitely  to  the  synoptic  problem. 
The  difference  between  the  first  three  gospels  and  John  is 
apparent  to  every  reader.  But  the  agreement,  often  verbal, 
of  the  former  among  themselves  is  also  apparent.  What, 
then,  is  the  reciprocal  relation  of  these  writings?  This 
question  is  all  the  more  pressing  on  account  of  the  differences 
in  these  writings — differences,  e.  g.,  as  regards  the  infancy 
stories,  the  resurrection  stories,  the  witnesses  of  the  death  of 


350    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

Jesus,  his  last  words.  Above  all  else,  each  of  the  three 
gospels  has  its  quite  specific  character.  Mark  is  a  brief, 
charming  narrative  of  the  deeds  of  Jesus,  with  an  extremely 
scanty  selection  of  words;  even  these  words  are  narrated  as 
deeds.  Matthew  and  Luke  give  a  wealth  of  story  and  dis- 
course; but  Matthew  is  of  Judaic,  legal  coloring,  its  author 
betraying  acquaintance  with  the  Hebrew  text  of  the  Old 
Testament;  while  Luke  has  little  of  the  national-leofal,  but 
paints  Jesus  for  his  gentile-Christian  readers  as  the  Savior 
of  the  poor  and  the  sinful. 

The  problem  due  to  this  union  of  identity  and  diversity 
is  the  so-called  synoptic  problem.  If  it  were  a  question  of  a 
purely  literary  historical  character,  we  would  relegate  it  to 
the  specialists.  But  the  conception  which  we  have  of  Jesus 
and  of  the  gospel  in  general  depends  in  good  part  upon  which 
one  of  the  three  gospels  we  consider  basic.  Our  hope  of 
finding  in  the  synoptics,  without  further  ado,  the  genuine 
oldest  tradition  proves  to  be  deceptive.  The  differences 
already  mentioned  prove  this.  Where  do  we  find  the  oldest 
traditions  in  the  synoptics?  What  narratives  are  derivative 
and  historically  unavailable?  An  investigation  of  this 
problem  alone  can  bring  us  a  step  farther  with  our  question : 
Who  was  Jesus? 

As  we  discuss  the  sources  of  the  synoptics,  there  are  three 
propositions  about  which  there  can  be  no  doubt: 

1.  Mark  is  a  source  of  Matthew  and  Luke. 

2.  Besides  Mark,  a  common  Greek  source  of  discourses 
underlies  Matthew  and  Luke. 

3.  Finally,  Matthew  and  Luke  each  has  his  separate  fund 
of  tradition. 

We  may  begin  with  the  first  of  these  propositions. 

1.  To  the  most  superficial  examination  it  is  evident  that 
the  entire  material  of  Mark  is  almost  wholly  contained  in 
Matthew  and  Luke.     If  we  did  not  have  Mark  at  all,  we 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  351 

should  not  be  much  worse  o£P,  so  far  as  our  knowledge  of 
Jesus  is  concerned,  since  almost  the  entire  content  of  Mark 
is  to  be  read  in  Matthew  and  Luke.  How  is  this  to  be 
explained?  Either  Mark  must  be  a  source  or  it  must  be  an 
excerpt  of  Matthew  and  Luke.  Now,  we  know  for  a  certainty 
that  Luke  knew  and  used  older,  more  incomplete  evangelical 
writings.  Since,  now,  Luke's  gospel  contains  almost  all  of 
Mark,  it  is  natural  to  consider  the  latter  one  of  the  sources 
of  the  former.  Mark,  therefore,  will  not  be  an  excerpt  from 
Matthew  and  Luke ;  but  then  it  is  their  source. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  items  in  Mark  which  are  wanting 
in  Matthew  and  Luke ;  e.  (/.,  Mark  3:20  f.;  7:32£P.;  8:22-25. 
Is  it  surprising  that  they  tell  nothing  of  the  supposed  dement- 
edness  of  Jesus,  and  as  little  of  the  pains  and  circumstan- 
tialness  of  his  healing  ministry?  Another  time  the  two 
longer  gospels  supplement  each  other.  Luke  leaves  out  Mark 
material  which  Matthew  has  read.  Matthew  leaves  out  some 
that  Luke  repeats.  Matthew,  e.  g.,  does  not  give  the  little 
episode  of  the  flight  of  Jesus,'  the  mysterious  wonder-worker,^ 
the  widow's  mite^ — traditions  which  belong  to  the  most 
certain  and  most  valuable  facts  which  we  have  concerning 
Jesus.  And  it  is  easy  to  understand  that  a  later  evangelist 
would  take  ofPense  at  so  unchurchly  an  anecdote  as  that  of 
the  wonder-worker.  In  a  similar  manner  we  can  assign 
reasons  for  many  omissions.  Why  should  Luke  tell  his 
gentile  readers  of  Jesus'  reluctant  attitude  toward  the  gentile 
woman  referred  to  in  Mark  7 :  2-4-30  ?  That  would  seem  to 
have  contradicted  Jesus'  bearing  at  the  beginning  in  Nazareth, 
Luke  4:25ff.  What  interest  would  Luke's  circle  of  readers 
have  in  Jesus'  controversies  with  the  Pharisees  concerning 
washing  of  hands,  etc.  ?  Even  Mark  had  to  elucidate  this 
for  his  readers,  7: 1-23. 

2.  The  disposition  of  the  short  gospel  is  precisely  that  of 

1  Mark  1 :  35-38.  2  Mark  9 :  38-40.  3  Mark  12 :  41-44. 


352    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

the  two  longer  gospels  also.  If  two  authors  use  almost  the 
whole  material  of  a  third  in  the  arrangement  in  which  this 
third  gave  it/  this  fact  is  a  cardinal  proof  that  the  third  is 
their  source. 

3.  Add  to  this  that  the  wording  of  the  Mark  gospel  is 
taken  over  by  Matthew  and  Luke,  only  in  better  Greek. 

4.  The  short  gospel,  as  against  the  two  longer  ones, 
represents  an  earlier  stage  of  Christian  apologetics.  Thus, 
the  employment  of  Mark  by  Luke  and  Matthew  becomes 
clear  when  we  take  into  account  the  content  of  the  three 
writings. 

All  our  gospels  are,  indeed,  confessions  of  faith.  They  are 
designed  to  awaken,  to  fortify  faith  in  Jesus,  and  to  defend 
that  faith  against  attacks  and  doubts  from  within  and  from 
without.  No  evangelist  would  have  occupied  so  cool  an 
attitude  toward  Jesus  that  he  would  have  been  willing  or 
able  to  give  a  mere  historical  narrative  without  any  prac- 
tical end.  It  is  just  on  this  account  that  they  all  belong,  to 
a  certain  degree,  to  the  apologetic  missionary  literature  of 
primitive  Christianity.  If  this  be  exactly  as  true  of  Mark  as 
of  the  other  gospels,  it  shows  also  that  the  former  represents 
an  earlier  stage  of  this  apologetics. 

Mark  recognized  the  story  of  John  the  Baptist  as  "  begin- 
ning of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,"  and  described  the  Baptist 
as  a  forerunner  who  points  to  one  greater  than  himself.^  But 
his  exposition  awakens  scruples.  The  Baptist  appears  first 
and  Jesus  afterward.  The  Baptist  seems  the  greater:  he 
baptizes  Jesus,  and  does  he  not  baptize  with  the  baptism  of 
repentance  for  the  forgiveness  of  sins?  These  samples  are 
taken  into  account  by  Matthew  and  Luke,  Matthew  inserts 
a  conversation  between  Jesus  and  the  Baptist,  in  which  the 
Baptist  represents  himself  as  the  less,  Jesus  as  the  greater 

1  Many  items  which  seem  at  first  sight  to  tell  against  this  statement  do  not  in 
fact  do  so,  as  closer  examination  will  convince  the  reader. 

2  Mark  1:1-11. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  353 

who  should  baptize  him;  while  Luke'  takes  pains  to  set  the 
Baptist  forth  as  the  lesser  forerunner  of  the  great  redeemer.' 
How  this  apologetics  ended  with  John  we  have  already  seen. 
Mark  drew  up  his  whole  narrative  in  enthusiasm  for 
Jesus;  and  yet  it  contains  much  that  is  incomplete,  much 
that  is  offensive  to  later  eyes.  Unwarily  he  let  the  people 
of  Nazareth  speak  ^  of  the  carpenter  vocation  of  Jesus,  and  he 
told  how  Jesus'  relatives  once  considered  him  insane.*  On 
no  side  did  he  describe  the  ability  of  Jesus  as  unlimited,  not 
even  in  morals.  Jesus  did  not  allow  himself  to  be  called 
''good,"^  did  not  know  the  day  and  the  hour  of  his  return,*^ 
was  not  able  to  decide  concerning  places  in  the  kingdom  of 
God.'  Jesus  asked  the  demon  his  name  ;*  he  asked  who  it  was 
that  touched  his  clothes;''  what  it  was  his  disciples  disputed 
about  ;^°  how  long  the  epileptic  had  been  sick."  Even  his 
miraculous  power  was  limited.'"  While  we  today  ascribe  the 
greatest  historical  fidelity  to  Mark  on  account  of  these 
features,  his  earliest  Christian  readers  were  painfully  affected 
by  so  many  defects  in  his  picture  of  Jesus,  so  many  con- 
venient vulnerable  points  for  Jewish  and  Greek  mania  for 
ridicule.  Hence  we  see  that  now  Matthew,  now  Luke,  then 
again  both  together,  are  careful  to  remove  such  offenses, 
now  by  simple  silence,  now  by  correction,  again  by  elucida- 
tion. E.  (J.,  he  was  not  the  carpenter,  but  the  carpenter's 
son;'^  not,  "he  could  do  no  miracles,"  but  "he  did  none;"" 
not,  "Why  callest  thou  me  good?  No  one  is  good  but  God," 
but,   "Why  do   you  ask   me  who  is  good,"  etc. — so  writes 

1  Luke,  chaps.  1  and  2.  6 13 ;  32 ;  cf.  Luke. 

2  See  Luke  1 :  41  especially.  UO :  30 ;  cf.  Luke. 

3  Mark  6:3;  cf.  Matthew,  Luke.  85:9;  cf.  Matthew. 
*3:  21 ;  cf.  Matthew,  Luke.  "S:  30;  c/.  Matthew. 

510:  18;  cf.  Matthew.  10 9:  33;  cf.  Matthew,  Luke. 

"9:  21 ;  cf.  Matthew,  Luke. 

126:  5;  cf.  Matthew;  1:  32,  34;  3: 10;  cf.  Matthew;  8:  23-25;  cf.  Matthew,  Luke; 
8:12;  c/.  Matthew. 

13  Matt.  13 :  35 ;  Luke  4 :  22.  i*  13 :  58, 


354    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

Matthew.^  The  most  difficult  problem  for  all  Christians  of 
the  primitive  period  was  the  death  of  their  Messiah — all  the 
more  so,  since  Jews  and  Greeks  began  their  assault  at  this 
point.  Mark  had  done  much  to  parry  this  thrust,  yet  much 
too  little  to  suit  those  who  came  after  him.  Something  so 
gloomy,  comfortless,  mantled  the  story  of  the  passion,  that 
there  was  relief  only  in  the  story  of  the  resurrection.  Is 
this  the  Son  of  God  whose  soul  was  sorrowful  unto  death  in 
Gethsemane,^  who  was  betrayed  by  one  of  his  disciples,  who 
was  overcome  by  his  foes,  who  died  with  the  cry  of  God- 
forsakenness?^  Compare  with  this  the  exposition  given  in 
the  two  longer  gospels.  Luke*  cancels  the  mortal  distress  of 
Jesus  in  Gethsemane.  Matthew^  removes  every  appearance 
of  helplessness :  legions  of  angels  were  at  his  disposal.  Pilate, 
with  much  more  energy  in  Luke  than  in  Mark,  announces 
the  complete  innocence  of  Jesus.^  Matthew'  enlarges  upon 
the  punishment  of  the  traitor,  Matthew  and  Luke  point  to 
the  penal  wrath  of  God  upon  murderous  Jews.^  While 
Matthew  adduces  a  mighty  nature-miracle  to  bear  witness  to 
the  innocence  of  the  crucified  Jesus,  the  whole  impression 
of  the  death  of  Jesus  has  become  more  consolinij  in  Luke. 
Not  with  the  cry,  "My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken 
me?"  does  the  Redeemer  die;  no,  he  dies  supplicating  par- 
don for  his  murderers,  opening  the  gate  of  Paradise  to  the 
believing  sinner,  commending  his  spirit  to  God.  Thus  the 
two  evangelists  have  given  satisfactory  answer  to  a  whole 
series  of  assaults  and  scruples.  But  the  resurrection  message 
forms  a  last  oppressive  problem.  Paul's  narrative  was  about 
the  appearances  of  Jesus.  He  does  not  say  a  word  about  the 
grave  that  was  found  empty."  Mark  tells  of  the  appearances 
of  Jesus  in  Galilee  where  he  had  advised  his  disciples  that 

1  Matt.  19:17.  *  Luke  22: 39  f.  7  Matt.  27  :  3-10. 

2Markl4:33f.  5Matt.26:53.  8  Matt.  27:25;  23:  28  ff. 

315:34.  6  Luke  23: 1-23.  HCor.  15:5ff. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  355 

he  would  meet  them/  In  addition  to  this,  he  tells  how  the 
three  women — they  alone  and  not  the  disciples — found  the 
grave  empty,  but  told  no  one  anything  concerning  what  they 
had  seen  and  heard. ^  How  much  this  left  to  be  proved  and 
elucidated!  Luke  says  that  not  merely  the  women,  but  the 
disciples  themselves,  found  the  grave  empty  ;^  Matthew,  that 
the  women  saw,  not  merely  the  empty  grave,  but  the  Risen 
One  himself;*  both,  that  the  women  were  not  silent  concern- 
ing their  experience.^  Wherefore  was  Galilee  the  theater 
of  the  appearances?  In  and  about  Jerusalem  Jesus  had 
frequently  appeared  to  the  disciples;®  and  not  as  spirit,  but 
as  body,  eating  and  drinking!'  According  to  Matthew,  the 
answer  of  the  Jews  to  the  message  of  the  empty  tomb  was: 
Theft  on  the  part  of  the  disciples.*  To  this  Matthew  gives 
the  reply  of  the  Christians:  Impossible!  the  grave  was 
watched  by  Roman  soldiers." 

The  proof  that  the  predictions  of  the  Old  Testament  were 
fulfilled  in  the  life  of  Jesus  has  ever  been  viewed  as  of  pri- 
mary importance,  together  with  the  proof  of  miracles,  in  the 
defense  of  Christianity.  That  there  is  so  little  of  this  proof 
in  Mark  is  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  his  gentile- 
Christian  readers  did  not  yet  have  this  interest  in  the  Old 
Testament  and  its  predictions.  In  this  matter  the  later  evan- 
gelists supply  much  that  is  supplementary.  According  to 
Luke,  Jesus  appeared  in  Nazareth  with  a  preaching  which 
treated  of  the  fulfilment  of  messianic  predictions.'"  Thus,  too, 
the  last  thing  that  the  Risen  One  did  before  his  departure  was 
to  open  the  eyes  of  his  disciples  to  see  in  him  the  fulfilment 
of  Old  Testament  predictions."  Especially  did  Matthew 
supplement  the  proof  of  the  oracles  that  were  fulfilled  in  all 

iMark  14:28;  16:7.  5 Matt.  28 : 8 ;  Luke  24 : 9.  9  27:62-66;  28:11-15. 

216:8.  6  Luke,  chap.  24.  lo  Luke  4:17-21. 

3  Luke  14:12-24.  '24:36-43.  "24:44f. 

*Matt.  28:9f.  « Matt.  28:15. 


356    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

places  of  Mark's  narrative  wherever  there  was  any  occasion 
to  do  so.  Two  of  these  supplementations  are  especially 
instructive.  A  later  time  was  offended  at  the  Messiah's 
working  in  Galilee.  Matthew  found  the  way  out  of  the 
difficulty:  Galilee  is  mentioned  by  the  prophet  Isaiah.^ 
According  to  Mark,  Jesus  frequently  forbade  those  who  were 
healed  from  speaking  about  his  miraculous  deeds.  This  was 
an  extremely  surprising  feature,  since  a  miracle  was  proof  of 
the  mission  of  Jesus.  Matthew  finds  the  explanation  of  this 
behavior  in  the  Old  Testament:  Jesus  is  Isaiah's  Servant  of 
Jehovah  in  his  quiet,  humble  bearing.^  Thus  what  was  so 
surprising  was  converted  into  a  proof  of  his  messiahship. 
In  connection  with  this  argument  from  prediction,  Matthew 
and  Luke  supply  the  infancy  stories  to  the  narrative  of  Mark. 
Mark  begins  by  saying  that  a  man,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  came 
to  the  Jordan,  and  at  his  baptism  received  the  gift  of  the 
Spirit  and  the  divine  call:  "Thou  art  my  Son."^  To  many 
Christians  there  was  much  lacking  in  this  statement:  no 
indication  that  Jesus  was  the  expected  son  of  David,  and 
Nazareth  his  home  instead  of  Bethlehem!  Matthew  and 
Luke  made  good  these  defects,  and  at  the  same  time,  each  in 
his  own  way,  answered  the  troublesome  question  why  Jesus 
appeared  as  a  Nazarene,  notwithstanding  his  birth  in  Beth- 
lehem. Luke  says  that  he  was  a  resident  of  Nazareth,  but  that 
a  miraculous,  divine  dispensation  of  secular  history  had  caused 
him  to  be  born  in  Bethlehem.  Matthew  says  that  he  was  born 
in  Bethlehem  according  to  the  Scriptures,  but  that  the  fear  and 
bloodthirstiness  of  Herod  had  caused  him  to  flee  thence,  and 
finally  to  take  up  his  abode  in  Nazareth,  in  order  that,  in 
this  way,  a  series  of  divine  oracles  might  be  fulfilled.  Mark 
knows  nothing  of  all  these  difficulties,  nor  of  the  attempts  to 
overcome  them.  To  him  Jesus  becomes  Son  of  God  by  divine 
election  and  by  the  equipment  of  the  Spirit  at  the  moment 

iMatt.  4:14f.  212:17.  3  Mark  1:9-13. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  357 

of  his  baptism.'  But  the  later  evangelists  use  the  title  "Son 
of  God"  to  introduce  him  as  one  who  was  begotten  by  no 
earthly  father,  but  by  the  creative  power  of  the  Spirit.^  In 
this  way  the  strange  incongruity  arises  of  one  who  is  begot- 
ten by  the  Holy  Spirit  being  subsequently  endowed  with 
the  Holy  Spirit.  This  is  a  striking  evidence  that  the  short 
gospel  is  source  of  the  two  longer  ones. 

Finally,  there  are  legendary  additions  to  the  later 
gospels.^ 

This  main  outcome  of  a  study  of  this  kind,  viz.,  Mark  is  a  source 
of  Matthew  and  Luke,  is  sufficiently  established  by  the  fourfold 
series  of  proofs:  material,  disposition  of  material,  language,  content. 
This  result  is  a  good  reward  of  a  century's  work.* 

We  may  turn  now  to  the  Greek  source  of  discourses  of 
Jesus,  which  is  employed  in  common  by  Matthew  and 
Luke.  We  find  the  same  text  in  two  writings,  Matthew  and 
Luke,  and  neither  of  these  writings  can  be  referred  to  the 
other. 

1.  Subtract  the  Mark  narrative  from  Matthew  and  Luke, 
and  they  agree,  in  addition,  in  the  tradition  of  parts  of  great 
coherent  discourses. 

The  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  which  we  analyze  as  follows: 


Discourse  on  righteous- 

Matt. 

,5: 

: 3-48 ; 

Luke   6:20-49; 

ness 

7: 

1-6, 12-27 

11:33; 
12  :  58  f . ; 
16:17f. 

Discourse  on  prayer 

6; 

7; 

;  9-13 ; 
:7-ll 

11 : 2-4,  9-13 

Treasures  and  care 

6; 

: 19-34 

12 :  22-34 ; 
ll:34f.;  16,13 

1  Mark  1:11.  2  Luke  1 :  85 ;  Matt.  1 :  18. 

3  Matt.  14:28-31;  17:24-27;  Matt.  16:18f.,  introducing  an  ecclesiastical  concept 
into  the  extremely  unecclesiastical  preaching  of  Jesus ;  cf.  Mark  2 :  14  with  Matt.  9 : 9. 
A  great  series  of  such  observations  might  be  introduced  whereby  the  priority  of  the 
short  gospel  to  the  two  long  ones  becomes  evident. 

*  Weenle. 


358    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Discourse  on  missions  8  :  19-22  9 :  57  to 

9:37f.;  10:16,21-24 

10:5-16,23-25, 

40  f.; 
11 :  20-27 ; 
13 :  16  f. 
Discourse  on  John  11 :  2-19  7 :  18-35 ; 

16:16 
Discourse  on  Beelzebub  12:22-37  11:14-23 

Discourse  on  demand  of  12 :  38-45  11 :  29-32 ; 

sign  24-26 

Discourse  on  Pharisees  23 : 1-39  11 :  39-52 ; 

13 :  34  f . 
Parables  of  the  kingdom  13 :  31-33  13 :  18-21 

Discourse  on  confession  10 :  26-39  12 : 2-9,  51-53 ; 

14 :  26  f . 
Discourse  on  discipleship  18  :  7, 12-22  15  :  3-7 ; 

17 : 1-4 
Parousia  24 :  26ff.,  37-51  17 :  23-37; 

12 :  39-46 
Parable  of  the  wedding  22 : 1-14  14 :  16-24 

Parable  of  the  talents  25  :  14-30  19 :  12-27 

To  these  discourses  of  Jesus  may  be  added: 

Discourse    of    John  the   Matt.  3:7-12  Luke  3 :  7-9,  16  f. 

Baptist 
Temptation  conversation  4 : 3-10  4 : 3-12 

Centurion  of  Capernaum  8 : 5-13  7 : 2-10 ; 

13 :  28-30 

2.  The  arrangements  of  the  parts  of  discourse  which  are 
common  to  Matthew  and  Luke  are  entirely  different.  Luke 
inserts  them,  together  with  other  material,  in  two  interpola- 
tions, into  the  Mark  narrative.'  But  Matthew  interweaves 
them  with  the  Mark  narrative  in  suitable  places.  The 
principle  of  arrangement  being  so  different,  it  follows  that 
the  one  evangelist  does  not  copy  from  the  other,  but  that 
both  follow  a  common  source  in  which  the  discourses  lay 
before  each  separately. 

1  Luke  6 :  20-8 :  3 ;  9 :  51-18 :  14.    Two  or  three  times  do  the  two  coincide. 


SOUECES  OF  THE  LiFE  OF  JeSUS        359 

3.  The  text  of  the  discourse,  now  in  Luke,  now  in  Mat- 
thew, is  more  original,  is  older.  On  the  whole,  Luke's 
elaboration  of  the  text  is  greater,  so  that  very  frequently 
the  original  is  to  be  found  with  Matthew.  In  twofold 
regard  has  Luke  changed  the  content  and  spirit  of  the  dis- 
courses. In  the  first  place,  he  removes  or  paints  over  the 
national-legal  features  as  much  as  possible  in  the  interest  of 
his  gentile-Christian  readers — as  Mark  had  done  before  him. 
It  is  only  in  Matthew,  and  not  in  Luke,  that  we  read  that 
great  explanation  given  by  Jesus  concerning  his  attitude 
toward  the  law,'  the  prohibition  of  the  heathen  and  Samaritan 
mission,'  the  requirement  to  observe  all  that  the  scribes  teach.^ 
Compare  also  Matt.  5 :  18  with  Luke  16 :  17.  Therefore,  Luke 
also  abridges  the  discourse  against  the  Pharisees  and  scribes.* 
But  Luke  not  only  removes  the  original  color  out  of  the 
source,  but  substitutes  therefor  what  was  later  and  foreign: 
the  so-called  social  trait,  the  intentional  favoring  of  the  poor 
simply  as  poor  and  the  preaching  of  the  selling  of  goods^. 
and  of  alms.  Luke  6:24-26;  12:33  (  =  Matt.  6:20);  Luke* 
6 :  37 ;  11 :  41 — these  belong  to  the  violent  changes  on  the  part; 
of  Luke.  Here  and  there,  in  many  other  instances  still, 
Luke  has  changed,  where  Matthew  has  preserved  for  us,  the 
original  wording.^  If,  however,  it  might  seem  from  all 
these  examples  that,  though  Matthew  so  frequently  offers  the 
original,  in  the  end  Matthew  is  simply  the  source  from  which 
Luke  derived  his  discourses,  this  seeming  is  at  once  destroyed 
by  the  opposite  observation  that  in  other  passages  the  text 
of  Luke  is  more  original  than  that  of  Matthew.  Matthew 
transforms  the  "Jonah  sign,"  which  can  be  nothing  in  its 
context  but  a  part  of  Jesus'  preaching  of  repentance,  into  a 
kind  of  proof  of  the  resurrection  miracle,  and  in  this  way 
turns  Jesus'  magnificent  refusal  of  any  proof  by  outer  sio-n 

iMatt.r):17f.  2i0:5.  323:3.  *  Luke  11:  39-52;  c/.  Matt.,  chap.  23. 

5 Luke  11:13;  Matt.  7:11,  "good;"  Luke  17:  25;  7:35,  c/.  7:29f. 


360    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

into  its  very  opposite.'  Where  we  read  in  Luke  a  short 
requirement  of  repeated  forgiveness,  the  Matthew  parallel 
offers  the  outlines  of  a  later  ecclesiastical  discipline  of 
penance.^  Matthew^  makes  Jesus  himself  speak  what,  accord- 
ing to  Luke,*  was  a  citation  from  a  foreign  source — "There- 
fore also  said  the  Wisdom  of  God."  Finally,  we  have  two 
certain  instances,  viz.,  the  parable  of  the  wedding  and  the 
parable  of  the  talents,  where  at  times  the  one  evangelist 
remains  faithful  to  the  text  of  the  source,  and  the  other 
leaves  it;  and  we  can  thus  reconstruct  the  original  text 
merely  by  the  reciprocal  stripping  off  of  the  additions. 
Compare  Matt.  22:1-14  with  Luke  14:15-24.  It  is  pre- 
cisely this  reciprocity  of  relation  that  is  the  telling  proof 
that  not  the  one  evangelist  is  dependent  upon  the  other,  but 
rather  both  upon  a  source.  And,  to  be  sure,  the  source  must 
have  been  written  in  Greek,  since  it  would  be  impossible  for 
two  different  translators  of  the  Syriac  text  into  the  Greek 
wording  to  coincide  so  completely  as  is  the  case  in  several 
long  parallels  of  Matthew  and  Luke. 

Finally,  we  have  two  excellent  proofs  that  the  assumption 
of  two  such  main  sources  along  with  Mark  really  explains 
the  complicated  relation  of  the  gospels :  on  the  one  hand,  the 
so-called  doublets  of  Matthew  and  Luke;  on  the  other,  the 
distinct  compilation  of  Matthew  from  discourses  and  history. 
The  explanation  of  the  doublets  is  extremely  simple:  they 
occur  in  both  sources.  Four  of  these  doublets,  which  are  in 
both  Matthew  and  Luke,  follow: 

To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given  — 

1.  Luke    8: 18  ;  ^    ,  2.  Luke  19:26  )  g 

Matt.  13: 12  \  ^^^^^^  Matt.  25: 29  ^  Source 

On  bearing  the  cross  — 

1.  Luke    9:23  )  ^    ,  2.  Luke  14:27  ;  g 

Matt.  16:24  \  ^^^^^  Matt.  10:38  \  ^^^^^^ 

1  Luke  11 :  29  f . ;  cf.  Matt.  12 :  40.  3  Matt.  23 :  34. 

'^Ijukell:  31.;  cf.  Matt.  18:  15  3.  *  Luke  11:  49. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      361 

On  finding  and  losing  the  life  — 

1.  Luke    9:24  )  ^^,  2.  Luke  17:.33  )  ^ 

Matt.  16:25  J  ^^^^^^  Matt.  10:39  ^  Source 

Discord  in  the  family  — 

1.  Luke  21:16  )  ^^^r^  .  2.  Luke  12: 52  }  ^ 

Matt.  10:21  \  ^^''^  Matt.l0:35  \  Source 

Above  all,  the  two-source  theory  explains  the  duplication 
of  the  missionary  discourse  in  Luke/  whose  different  audi- 
ences— the  Twelve  and  seventy  disciples — cannot  be  ex- 
plained away  by  saying  that  both  times  the  content  of  the 
discourse  is  the  same. 

The  other  proof  of  the  two-source  theory  is  found  in 
Matthew  considered  by  itself.  His  gospel  is  composed  of  two 
elements :  discourses,^  and  history  in  which  single  words  and 
brief  conversations  are  interwoven.  It  is  highly  significant 
that  five  times— viz.,  7:28;  11:1;  13:53;  19:1;  26:1— does 
Matthew  use  a  special  formula,  "and  it  came  to  pass  when 
Jesus  had  finished  these  sayings,"  as  leading  over  to  the 
thread  of  the  narrative,  and  that  four  of  these  five  passages 
really  lead  from  one  source  to  another.  Therefore,  if  we 
had  only  our  Matthew,  we  should  conclude  from  this  kind  of 
composition  that  he  had  combined  a  discourse  source  with  a 
narrative  source,  and  still  let  us  know  the  places  of  the  com- 
bination. And  it  agrees  with  this  again  that  Luke  may  be 
divided  into  a  Mark  narrative  and  two  interpolations. 

In  and  of  itself,  the  coincidence  of  Matthew  with  Luke  in 
the  same  series  of  sayings  would  not  yet  lead  to  the  assumption 
of  a  common  older  discourse  source.  But  the  wholly  different 
arrangement  of  these  discourses,  their  divergent  text,  now 
Matthew,  now  Luke  using  the  more  original,  the  doublets  of 
the  words  of  the  Lord  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  the  twofold 
character  of  Matthew  (discourses  and  history  with  special 
formula  of  combination),  lead  convincingly  to  this  assumption, 

1  Luke,  chaps.  9  and  10. 

2  Matt,  chaps.  5-7,  10,  11,  12,  13,  18,  23,  24,  25. 


362    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

without  our  thereby  transcending  the  limits  of  our  knowledge^ 
and  having  recourse  to  supposition. 

But  Matthew  and  Luke  have,  respectively,  exclusive  mate- 
rial. If  one  strips  off  the  material  of  Mark  and  the  common 
discourse  portions  from  the  entire  material  of  Matthew  and 
Luke,  those  narratives  and  words  of  the  Lord  remain  which 
each  has  of  himself  alone.  It  is  quite  certain  that  they  have 
not  invented  all  this  material  that  is  peculiar  to  each.  Here, 
too,  we  may  assume  sources;  i.  e.,  older  traditions.  But  since 
we  have  no  parallel  tradition,  the  question  of  the  origin  of 
these  traditions,  the  distinction  between  given  material  and 
the  additions  of  the  evangelists,  is  specially  difficult.  Provi- 
sionally the  fact  is  sufficient  that,  in  addition  to  Mark  and  the 
Logia,  there  are  sources  peculiar  to  each,  Matthew  and  Luke, 
and  that  the  whole  synoptic  material  is  derived  from  these 
three  sources. 

What,  now,  is  the  result  for  the  investigation  of  the  life 
of  Jesus?  To  be  sure,  we  are  not  yet  at  the  end  of  our  way, 
but  the  path  has  become  freer,  the  material  with  which  we 
have  to  deal  has  been  somewhat  sifted,  and  instead  of  the 
synoptics  themselves  we  have  something  of  their  sources. 

The  most  important  thing  of  all  is  that  Matthew  and  Luke 
are  derivative,  composite  works.  As  we  seek  to  answer  the 
question,  Who  was  Jesus  ?  we  do  not  take  them  into  account 
for  their  own  sake  alone,  but  only  for  the  sake  of  the  sources 
communicated  by  them.  Thus,  too,  the  greater  worth  of 
Mark  grows  upon  us.  The  results  are  illuminating  at  once. 
With  the  Vorgeschichten  of  Matthew  and  Luke  we  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  in  investigating  the  life  of  Jesus; 
the  problem  of  the  miraculous  generation  of  Jesus  is  no 
longer  of  interest  to  that  inquiry.  Our  oldest  tradition  con- 
cerning Jesus  begins  when  Jesus  comes  from  Nazareth  to 
Jordan  to  be  baptized  of  John.      Equally  so,  all  supplemen- 


Sources  of  the  Life  op  Jesus  363 

tations  of  Mark  on  the  part  of  Matthew  and  Luke  are  to  be 
excluded  from  the  passion  and  resurrection  stories.  And  in 
the  course  of  the  history  of  Jesus,  the  proof  from  prediction, 
and  many  another  feature  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  recede 
behind  the  simpler  exposition  of  Matthew.  But  this  regress 
from  the  synoptics  to  their  sources  does  not  seem  to  signify 
such  a  profound  change  in  the  evangelical  picture  as  does  the 
regress  from  John  to  the  synoptics.  In  the  main  points  the 
exposition  of  Jesus  and  of  his  gospel  remains  the  same.  This 
is  a  sign  that  these  sources  are  closer  to  the  historical  kernel. 
But  the  final  difficult  problem  remains.  Are  the  three 
ascertained  sources — Mark,  discourse  source,  the  separate 
source  of  Matthew  and  of  Luke — really  the  last  court  of 
appeal  in  our  inquiry  ?  Do  they  not  themselves  presuppose 
still  older,  more  original  writings?  What  worth  attaches  to 
these  latter  writings  for  our  question:   Who  was  Jesus? 

Is  Mark  the  author  of  the  Mark  gospel?'  The  Papias 
tradition  belongs  to  those  which  can  be  neither  refuted  nor 
proved.  It  is  therefore  possible.  The  gospel  gives  a  certain 
prominence  to  Peter,  as  we  might  expect  would  be  the  case 
on  the  part  of  him  who  was  his  companion  and  mouthpiece. 
The  narrative  of  Jesus'  appearance  in  Galilee  begins  with 
the  call  of  Simon  (1 :  10),  and  the  author  would  conclude 
with  the  narrative  of  Jesus'  appearance  to  Peter  (16:7). 
When  the  Twelve  are  chosen,  Simon  receives  the  name  of 
Peter  (3: 10).  It  is  he  who  first  utters  the  messianic  confes- 
sion (8:  29).  To  be  sure,  he  is  also  the  "Satan"  whom  Jesus 
rebukes  (8 :  32  f.),  and  the  disciple  who  denies  him  (14:  66-72). 
The  untheological,  lay  character  of  Mark  could  be  easily 
referred  to  the  Galilean  fisherman.  But  would  the  latter 
have  thought  so  little  in  a  national-Judaic  way  as  the  evan- 

1  Concerniug  Mark  himself,  see  Acts  12: 12;  13:  5-13;  15:39;  Col.  4:  10;  Philemon, 
vs.  24;  2  Tim.  4:11;  1  Pet.  5:  13. 


364    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

gelist?  Did  the  evangelist  receive  all  liis  miraculous  stories 
from  Peter  himself  ?  Critics  today  are  inclined  to  the  judg- 
ment that  Petrine  tradition  may  have  been  taken  up  into 
Mark  indeed,  but  that  the  evangelist  is  more  than  the  mouth 
of  Peter ;  that  the  equation,  Mark  =  Peter  =  Jesus,  is  inad- 
missible. The  question  as  to  the  Paulinism  of  Mark  is  far 
more  important.  At  times  Mark  lived  in  the  society  of  Paul. 
Then,  will  not  his  conception  of  Jesus  be  determined  by  the 
great  Pauline  thoughts?  This  is  not  the  case  in  a  specially 
strict  sense.  It  is  John,  and  not  Mark,  who  shows  us  the 
kind  of  gospel  that  would  be  written  on  the  basis  of  the  Pau- 
line theology.  Where  is  there  an  echo  of  the  view  of  human 
inability  to  do  God's  will?  Where  does  Jesus  speak  as  the 
Son  of  God  from  heaven,  the  reconciler  of  all  men  through 
his  blood?  Where  does  faith  in  him  appear  as  the  sole 
requirement  of  God,  in  place  of  doing  the  will  of  God? 
Where  do  we  see  anything  of  the  Pauline  grace,  of  the 
Pauline  Holy  Spirit,  in  Mark?  All  the  main  theological 
thoughts  of  Paul  are  foreign  to  Mark.  The  worth  of  the 
gospel  consists,  above  all  else,  in  its  disclosure  of  the  thoughts 
of  the  earliest  Christians  in  their  pre-Pauline  stage. 

It  is  not  meant  to  deny  any  influence  of  Paul  in  Mark. 
That  greatest  revolutionary  spirit  of  the  Christian  church 
encroached  too  deeply  into  the  course  of  history  for  any 
subsequent  Christian  writing  to  escape  his  impress  entirely. 
Mark  bears  effective  witness  to  the  fact  that  it  was  through 
Paul  that  Jesus  was  taken  from  the  Jews  and  given  to  the 
gentiles.  He  writes  his  gospel  for  the  law-free  gentile  Chris- 
tians, and  so  presents  Jesus  to  them  that  limitedness,  nation- 
alism, Judaism,  recede — no  Davidic  genealogies,  no  word 
concerning  jot  and  tittle  in  the  law  that  is  to  be  kept,  no 
limitation  of  missions  to  Israel.'  The  gospel  must  first  be 
preached  to  all  the  gentiles  before  the  end  comes.^     There- 

1  But  see  Mark  7: 27.  2  13:10. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      365 

fore,  if  one  understands  by  Paulinism  the  universalism  of 
missions  and  freedom  from  the  Jewish  law,  then,  but  only 
then,  is  Mark  to  be  said  to  be  influenced  by  Paul, 

But  even  if  one  admit  dependence  of  Mark  upon  Peter 
and  Paul,  that  yet  does  not  explain  this  writing.  It  belongs 
on  the  boundary  of  the  apostolic  age,  but  gives  information 
concerning  the  eyewitnesses  of  Jesus,  although  it  is  mixed 
up  with  much  tradition  that  is  uncertain  and  faded.  It  was 
probably  written  after  the  catastrophe  of  the  Jewish  people 
in  the  year  70;  otherwise  the  words  of  Jesus  concerning  the 
total  destruction  of  the  temple  would  hardly  appear  at 
the  beginning  of  his  discourse  on  the  future.'  The  local 
coloring  of  this  gospel  also  points  to  this  time  of  transition. 
Mark  mentions  all  sorts  of  localities,  where  Jesus  labored: 
besides  Capernaum,  the  land  of  the  Gerasenes,  Bethsaida, 
Gennesaret,  Dalmanutha,  Csesarea  Philippi.  But  he  has  no 
idea  of  all  these  places,  and  is  able  to  give  none ;  yet  he  speaks, 
e.  g.,  of  the  "mountain,"  as  if  there  were  only  one,  or  at  least 
only  one  known,  mountain  in  Galilee.  But  if  he  be  thus 
remotely  related,  temporally  and  locally,  to  the  life  of  Jesus, 
the  absence  of  any  clear  view  on  his  part  of  the  life  and  work 
of  Jesus  becomes  intelligible.  At  first  sight,  at  least,  it  may 
seem  that  he  is  able  to  give  an  excellent  picturesque  descrip- 
tion of  single  scenes.  But  a  clear  picture  of  the  connec- 
tion of  events  is  wanting  throughout,  and  even  the  picture 
of  particulars  frequently  vanishes  on  closer  examination. 
Mark  gives  no  answer  to  a  cardinal  question  in  the  investiga- 
tion of  the  life  of  Jesus:  Why  did  Jesus  go  to  Jerusalem? 
All  this  comports  with  the  tradition,  so  far  as  the  latter  itself 
declares  that  Mark  was  no  eyewitness  of  Jesus,  but  that  he 
merely  elaborated  the  preaching — i.  e.,  the  practical,  not 
historical,  discourses — of  Peter. 

1 13:  2.  See  also  12:  1-9,  pointing  to  the  event  of  the  year  70  as  punishment  for 
the  murder  of  the  "  Son." 


366    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

But,  in  view  of  all  this,  the  desire  must  awaken  in  us  to 
get  still  closer  to  Jesus,  on  the  basis  of  Mark  to  go  back  still 
farther.  First  of  all  the  question  arises  whether  Mark  is 
not  preceded  by  older  evangelical  writings,  whether  we  may 
detect  written  sources  of  Mark.  In  that  case  we  should  take 
one  step  farther  backward  toward  the  fountain  as  we  seek  to 
answer  the  question:  Who  was  Jesus?  The  proof  depends 
on  whether  single  sections  are  distinguished  by  marks  of 
earlier  origin. 

In  one  important  instance  this  is  probably  the  case.  In 
chap.  13  a  small  apocalyptic  fragment  from  the  beginning  of 
the  Jewish  war  seems  to  have  been  taken  up  by  the  evangel- 
ist. The  main  proof  is  as  follows:  The  entire  gospel  seems 
to  have  been  written  after  the  year  70,  else  the  saying  con- 
cerning the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  would  hardly  have 
occurred  as  it  does.'  But  a  large  part  of  chap.  13  seems  to 
have  been  written  before  that  catastrophe:  "But  when  ye 
see  the  abomination  of  desolation  standing  where  he  ought 
not  (let  him  that  readeth  understand),  then  let  them  that  are 
in  Judea  flee  unto  the  mountains."^  The  simplest  explana- 
tion of  this  contradiction  is  this:  "Let  him  that  readeth 
understand"  refers  to  a  prophetic  fugitive  piece  from  the 
beo:innincr  of  the  tribulation  of  the  Jewish  war,  and  counsels 
flight.  The  author  of  this  fugitive  piece  seems,  indeed,  to 
have  expected  the  desecration,  but  not  the  destruction,  of  the 
temple;  he  hoped  for  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  man  in  the 
moment  of  supreme  need.  This  fugitive  piece  —  we  know 
not  whence  it  came,  nor  all  that  it  contained — the  evangelist 
Mark  seems  to  have  taken  up  and  interpreted  as  revelation  of 
Jesus  to  Peter,  James,  John,  and  Andrew.  All  this  is  hypo- 
thetical indeed,  but  an  hypothesis  which  solves  a  real  riddle. 

But  this  is  about  the  only  case  where  we  can  discover, 
with  some  probability,  a  written  basis  of  Mark.      It  may  be 

113:2.  213:14. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  367 


that  a  source  of  discourses  lay  before  Mark  in  some  such 
shape.  No  one  can  know  this  definitely,  because  no  one 
knows  definitely  the  discourse-source  in  scope  and  content. 
The  fact  that  Mark  communicates  to  us  so  little  of  the  words 
of  Jesus,  is  so  little  concerned  to  give  a  clear  conception  of 
the  gospel  of  Jesus,  is  most  intelligible  on  the  hypothesis 
that  he  knows  a  discourse-source  and  supposes  the  same 
to  be  known  by  his  readers.  But  this  is  hypothesis  and 
nothing  more. 

We  must  be  content  with  observing  that — perhaps  with 
the  exception  of  chap.  13 — we  can  nowhere  indicate  with 
certainty  a  written  source  of  Mark,  We  can  speak  only  of 
traditions  which  reach  Mark  in  an  oral  way.  To  disengage 
these  traditions  from  the  Markan  addition,  and  to  follow 
them  backward  in  their  genesis  and  growth,  is  the  final  task 
of  the  synoptic  problem.  It  may  as  well  be  said  at  the  out- 
set that  only  probabilities  and  possibilities  are  in  store  for 
us.  There  is  no  strict  knowledge  in  this  res^ion.  The  sole 
evidence  of  the  correctness  of  the  solution  is  the  more  or  less 
strong  evidence  with  which  it  is  in  a  position  to  simplify 
and  clarify  the  complicated  and  opaque  situation. 

We  gain  the  best  insight  into  the  origin  of  this  gospel 
when  we  consider  Mark  as  a  compiler.  He  gets  hold  of  a 
rich  fulness  of  old  traditions;  he  himself  supplies  two  things 
thereto :  first,  the  combination  of  the  particular  material  to  a 
coherent  evangelical  narrative;  secondly,  the  constriiciion  of 
the  same  by  means  of  a  leading  or  guiding  idea.  If  we 
detach  and  remove  these  regulative  ideas  and  the  means  of 
combination,  we  then  have  as  residuum  the  single  traditions, 
as  they  came  into  the  hands  of  Mark,  and  have  again  taken 
one  step  closer  to  Jesus. 

The  whole  Mark  gospel  is  controlled  by  one  cardinal  idea : 
Jesus  the  Messiah,  the  Son  of  God.  The  point  is  to  awaken 
faith  in  this  article  of  faith,  to  prove  it,   and  to  defend  it. 


368    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

The  entire  gospel  is  an  apology.  Hence  the  way  it  is 
introduced:  "Beginning  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Son  of  God."  It  is  Mark's  purpose  to  lead  all  his  readers, 
whom  he  thinks  of  as  gentiles  and  gentile  Christians,  to  the 
confession  which  the  pagan  centurion  made:  "Of  a  truth, 
this  man  was  Son  of  God.'"  The  whole  narrative  serves 
this  end. 

The  proof  which  Mark  adduces  for  his  thesis  is  the  proof 
from  miracles,  with  which  all  the  ancient  Christians  proved 
the  divine  sonship  of  Jesus.  Hence  miracles  are  prominently 
put  in  the  foreground  of  the  narrative,  and  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  recede  into  the  background.  Consequently  the  histori- 
cal picture  is  much  obscured,  "the  person  of  Jesus  distorted 
into  the  grotesque  and  the  fantastic."^  His  spiritual  lofti- 
ness, the  glory  and  depth  of  his  message,  do  not  receive 
their  just  dues  in  the  presence  of  the  great  apparatus  of 
miracle.  Nature-miracles,  moreover,  are  prominent  along- 
side of  healing  miracles:  stilling  of  the  tempest,  walking  on 
the  sea,  feeding  of  four  thousand  and  of  five  thousand, 
sending  of  the  demons  into  the  herd  of  swine,  withering  of 
the  fig  tree  by  his  word.  And  according  to  Mark  it  is  pre- 
cisely these  great  miracles  which  are  said  to  have  led  the 
disciples  to  faith  in  the  Son  of  God.^  And  his  readers  are 
to  be  led  to  faith  in  the  Son  of  God  by  these  miracles  also. 

But  Mark  knows  still  other  proofs,  besides  miracles,  that 
Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God.  Voices  from  heaven  declare  him 
to  be  such.*  Demons,  therefore  superhuman  beings,  confess 
that  he  is  the  holy  one  of  God,  the  Son  of  the  Most  High 
God.*  These  are  proofs  from  the  spirit  world.  The  fulfil- 
ment of  Old  Testament  prophecy  is  a  proof  of  which  he  does 
not  make  much  use.®     Miracle  is  the  main  proof. 

115:39.  41:11;  9:7. 

2  Weenle.  5 1 :  24 ;  3 :  11 ;  5 : 7. 

3 See  4:  41;  6:52;  8:21;  8:22-26;  8:29.  61:2;  12:10;  14:27. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      369 

But  the  foes  of  the  Christians  soon  come  forward  with 
their  serious  objection :  Can  one  crucified  be  the  Son  of  Grod  ? 
Therefore  the  second  main  task  of  this  writing  is  the  de- 
fense of  the  death  of  Jesus.  To  associate  Son  of  God  and 
cross — it  is  this  also  which  Mark  would  lead  his  readers 
to  do.  Then  the  cross  would  cease  to  be  an  offense.  In  the 
very  face  of  the  death  of  Jesus  to  exclaim,  "  This  is  the  Son 
of  God'" — such  is  the  goal  to  which  the  Christians  are 
to  attain.  Therefore  the  teaching  of  Jesus  that  the  Messiah 
must  suffer  and  die  immediately  ensues  when  the  disciples 
confess:  "Thou  art  the  Messiah."  From  that  point  on  the 
whole  narrative  is  so  arranged  as  to  prepare  us  for  the  death 
of  Jesus,  and  to  break  the  force  of  the  blow  of  that  death, 
by  means  of  the  forebodings  of  Jesus,  the  predictions  of 
the  Scriptures,  and  anticipatory  occurrences.  Finally,  the 
resurrection  follows  the  death — God's  omnipotent  con- 
fession of  his  Son,  which  transforms  the  offense  into  a 
triumph. 

But  the  enemies  of  the  Christians  have  a  final  objection, 
which  Mark  has  to  answer:  Why  did  not  the  Jews  believe 
in  Jesus,  if  he  was  proved  to  be  the  Son  of  God  by  so  many 
miracles?  Does  not  the  fact  of  the  unbelief  of  the  Jews 
signify  a  failure  of  Jesus  which  tells  powerfully  against  his 
high  dignity?  Mark  gives  a  noteworthy  answer:  Jesus  did 
not  desire  to  be  recognized  by  the  Jewish  people  as  Messiah. 
Therefore  he  forbade  both  demons  and  disciples  to  declare 
the  mystery  of  his  divine  sonship.^  He  also  commanded 
those  who  were  healed  to  keep  silent  as  to  his  miraculous 
power.^  He  did  still  more  to  hinder  the  faith  of  the  Jews 
in  him.  He  spoke  to  them  in  parables — that  is,  in  riddles 
and  mysteries  —  in  order  that  "those  without,"  the  Jewish 
people,  might  not  understand  him,  but  be  hardened,  accord- 
ing to  the  word  of  Isaiah,   while  he  honored  his  disciples 

U5:39.  21:25,  34;  8:12,  30;  9:9.  31;  44;  5:  43;  7  :36;  8:  26. 


370    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

alone  with  an  interpretation  of  his  words  of  mystery,'  Con- 
sequently, the  unbelief  of  the  Jews  cannot  tell  against  Jesus, 
since  he  foreknew  it,  and  even  intentionally  brought  it  about. 

At  this  point  it  is  especially  clear  how  Mark  has  supplied 
his  own  ideas  to  the  tradition  concerning  Jesus,  and  how  only 
the  removal  of  these  ideas  brings  us  closer  to  the  historical 
Jesus.  There  is  his  unfortunate  theory  of  parables:  the 
conception  of  parable  as  mystery,  the  distinction  between 
those  who  are  "without"  and  the  initiated,  the  purpose  of 
obduracy.  All  this  is  perverse,  because  no  single  parable 
corresponds  to  the  theory,  no  single  parable  was  spoken 
by  Jesus  in  the  interest  of  the  obduracy  of  anyone;  but 
each  parable  was  spoken  to  make  his  teaching  clear  and 
intelligible. 

But,  in  order  to  make  the  fund  of  tradition  serve  his 
leading  ideas,  Mark  is  obliged  first  of  all  to  draw  up  the 
material  into  a  coherent  narrative.  It  may  be  assumed  that 
for  a  long  time  most  of  the  narratives  passed  singly  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  before  Mark  combined  them  into  a  con- 
tinuous story.  Even  so,  the  combination  is  quite  loose, 
external;  each  portion  may  be  easily  taken  out  of  its 
framework.  If  we  examine  this  framework,  what  do  we 
find  to  be  the  outer  course  of  events  which  was  given  to 
Mark?  Information  concerning  the  itinerant  life  of  Jesus 
in  Galilee;  frequent  trips  across  the  sea;  the  names  of  a 
number  of  localities  where  something  took  place;  finally, 
mention  of  Perea,  of  Jericho  as  a  station  on  the  way  to 
Jerusalem.  This  well-nigh  exhausts  his  knowledge  of  the 
outer  course  of  affairs.  It  is  in  this  framework  that  he 
places  the  rich  material  of  tradition.  Mark  does  the  best  he 
can  in  the  absence  of  any  conception  of  development,  of 
history  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word.  It  is  simply  an 
aggregate  of  single  pictures  into  which  modern  fantasy  has 
first  tried  to  introduce  some  pragmatic  connection. 

U:  lOff. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  371 

This  is  best  known  by  examining  Mark's  means  of  com- 
position. First  of  all,  there  are  the  general  introductions 
and  transitions.'  We  see  here  the  compiler  or  redactor  of 
tradition.  Originally  these  stories  were  not  related  to  one 
another.  There  is  no  evidence  that  they  followed  in  this 
series.  We  have  compositions  of  the  evangelist  before  us, 
with  the  connecting  links  and  words  that  he  supplies. 
Another  device  of  composition  is  interpolation.  One  story 
is  inserted  in  another.  In  the  narrative  of  the  sending  out 
of  the  Twelve  and  of  their  mission  Mark  inserts  the  account 
of  the  death  of  John  the  Baptist.^  Thus,  too,  he  inserts  the 
anointing  at  Bethany  ^  between  the  decision  of  the  hierarchy 
to  kill  Jesus  and  the  offer  of  Judas  to  serve  them.  Further- 
more, the  conversation  with  the  scribes  concerning  Beelzebub* 
is  inserted  in  the  narrative  of  the  kindred  of  Jesus  who  feared 
that  he  was  beside  himself.  Uniformly,  Mark  is  the  first  to 
make  the  connections.  Originally,  these  narratives  do  not 
belong  together.  There  are  other  examples  of  such  connec- 
tions: the  insertion  of  the  purification  of  the  temple  in  the 
narrative  of  the  fig  tree  that  was  cursed,^  the  weaving  of  the 
story  of  the  woman  with  issue  of  blood  into  the  story  of 
Jairus.^  We  thus  see  that  it  was  a  cardinal  device  of  Mark 
to  interconnect  single  loose  traditions  by  means  of  such 
interpolation. 

Naturally,  there  are  also  examples  of  inner  connection. 
Why  does  the  controversy  concerning  the  precepts  of  puri- 
fication, separated  from  all  other  controversies,  appear  in 
the  midst  of  the  story  of  feeding  the  people?'  Mark  finds 
Jesus  as  un-Jewish,  as  free,  as  in  the  narrative,  so  important 
to  him,  of  the  heathen  woman,  before  which  he  puts  that 
controversy:  the  Jesus  who  discarded  Jewish  precepts  is,  to 
Mark,  the  same  protector  of  gentile  Christians  as  the  Jesus 

iSeel:14,  39;  6:6;  2:13;  3:7£E.;  4:1;  5:21;  3:10fF.;  6:55f.;  1:45:  6:31. 

2  Chap.  6.    3  Chap.  14.    *  Chap.  3.    5 Chap.  11.    6  Chap.  5.    '7:1-23. 


372    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

who  had  compassion  on  the  gentile  woman.  We  see  here 
also  how  Mark  spins  a  situation  suitable  to  a  narrative  that 
is  given  to  him.  He  has  before  him  the  narrative  of  Jesus' 
helpful  meeting  with  the  gentile  woman;  in  this  matter 
Mark  requires  a  situation  in  the  land  of  the  gentiles,  and 
therefore  Jesus  must  make  a  journey  into  the  region  of  Tyre. 
The  great  conversation  groups  of  Mark  belong  to  this 
inner  connection — words  of  Jesus  in  which  his  power  to 
foro-ive  sins,  his  intercourse  with  publicans,  his  opposition 
to  fasts  and  to  sabbatic  rigorism  in  contrast  to  scribes,  Phari- 
sees, and  the  disciples  of  John,  are  set  forth. ^  There,  too, 
are  the  controversies  of  Jesus  with  hierarchs,  Pharisees, 
Sadducees,  scribes,  which  illustrate  Jesus'  attitude  to  the 
question  of  authority,  to  law  and  prophecy.^  We  have  a  third 
group  of  conversations  in  the  main  sayings  of  Jesus  concern- 
ing marriage,  children,  wealth,  voluntary  renunciation,  the 
duty  of  servants.^  It  was  the  kindred  content  which  led 
Mark  to  group  these  conversations  together.  In  like  man- 
ner a  number  of  series  of  sayings  are  associated  on  account 
of  kinship  of  theme.*  All  these  series  are  then  arranged  in 
the  framework  of  the  gospel  in  a  temporal  order.  And  it  is 
to  be  assumed  that  it  was  the  evangelist  who  gave  the  con- 
versations their  present  position,  who  transplanted  the  one 
in  Galilee,  the  other  in  Perea,  and  a  third  in  Jerusalem. 
The  sayings  and  conversations  of  themselves  contain  no 
reminder  of  a  definite  temporal  and  local  situation;  so  far  as 
anyone  can  see,  the  words  concerning  divorce  or  children 
might  have  been  spoken  at  the  beginning  of  the  Galilean 
ministry  quite  as  well  as  at  the  end.  If,  now,  one  would 
appreciate  all  these  sayings  and  conversations  historically, 
one  must  first  of  all  cut  out  the  factual  connection,  the 
temporal  sequence,  the   arrangement  or  articulation  in  the 

12:1-3,6.  211:27—12:40.  3  Chap.  10. 

U:l-34;  6:8-11;  7:1-23;  9:33-50;  chap.  13;  8:31—9:1. 


SOUECES    OF    THE    LiFE    OF    JeSUS  373 

framework  of  the  narrative,  in  order  to  consider  this  material 
as  it  was  when  Mark  came  by  it. 

The  result  remains  the  same  whatever  be  the  part  of  the 
gospel  which  one  may  investigate :  the  data  are  single  stories, 
single  conversations,  single  words,  which  Mark  combined  to 
a  whole.  Mark  brought  into  the  arrangement  single  domi- 
nant ideas  which  determined  the  material:  proof  of  the 
divine  sonship  of  Jesus,  defense  of  his  death,  explanation  of 
the  unbelief  of  the  Jews.  If,  on  the  basis  of  Mark,  one 
would  pass  backward  still  closer  to  Jesus,  one  must  become 
as  free  as  possible  both  from  the  ideas  of  Mark  and  from  the 
arrangement  of  his  material.  Only  the  material  itself,  not 
what  Mark  has  made  out  of  it,  is  historically  valuable. 

The  investigation  of  these  single  traditions  leads  us,  how- 
ever, quite  over  into  the  region  of  guessing  and  groping. 
Still,  much  will  become  clearer  if  we  will  but  attentively 
consider  it.  Single  narratives  there  are  which  quite  defi- 
nitely betray  their  derivation.  Thus,  immediately  at  the 
beginning,  in  the  prominence  of  the  call  of  the  first  disciples, 
the  healing  of  Peter's  mother-in-law,  the  flight  of  Jesus, 
Peter  is  so  conspicuous  that  we  can  easily  recognize  Petrine 
memorabilia.  In  connection  with  specially  important  and 
striking  traditions,  special  companions  appear,  manifestly 
vouchers,  to  whom  these  narratives  are  attributed.  Mys- 
teries concerning  the  future  of  Jesus  were  communicated 
only  to  Peter,  James,  John,  and  Andrew.'  More  frequently, 
only  the  first  three  appear  as  witnesses.  They  alone  were 
witnesses  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead,"  the  transfiguration 
of  Jesus,^  the  prayer  in  Gethsemane;*  but  of  the  transfigura- 
tion they  gave  no  narrative  during  the  lifetime  of  Jesus. 
For  the  narrative  of  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus  and  of  the  empty 
grave  the  authorities  are  the  three  women:  Mary  Magdalene, 
Mary  the  mother  of  James  the  less  and  of  Joses,  and  Salome ; 

1 13 :  3.  2  5 :  37,  3  9:2.  *  Chap.  14. 


374    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

but  of  that  which  they  saw  and  heard  at  the  grave  they  did 
not  say  anything  to  anyone.  It  looks  as  if  secret  traditions, 
not  known  from  the  beginning  and  not  known  to  all,  had 
been  introduced  here.  Moreover,  they  are  by  no  means  the 
most  certain  traditions  as  to  content. 

Frequently  single  narratives  give  us  a  hint  still  of  the 
more  simple  facts  which  underlie  them,  and  from  which  little 
by  little  the  present  form  of  the  tradition  has  taken  shape. 
This  is  true  especially  of  the  conversations.  It  is  striking 
how  frequently  ilie  Pharisees,  the  scribes,  confront  Jesus  as 
closed  groups.  As  such  the  earliest  Christianity  knows  them 
and  lives  in  conflict  with  them.  These  hostile  groups  are 
carried  back  into  the  narrative  of  Jesus,  who  of  course  did 
not  see  himself  confronted  everywhere  in  Galilee  by  whole 
societies  of  rabbis.  How  such  opposition  solidified  into 
"history"  is  vividly  illustrated  by  the  narrative  concerning 
the  woman  with  an  issue  of  blood.'  The  facts  are  extremely 
simple:  (1)  Jesus  forgave  sins;  (2)  this  was  considered 
blasphemy  by  the  scribes;  (3)  Jesus  and  his  disciples  met 
this  reproach  with  the  proof  from  miracles.  Out  of  these 
three  elements  the  narrative  concerning  the  woman  with  the 
issue  of  blood  is  formed,  on  which  account  the  scribes  must 
sit  in  the  house  where  Jesus  held  his  reception.  Or  take 
account  of  the  meal  with  the  publicans.^  How  is  it  that  the 
Pharisees  come  all  of  a  sudden  into  this  company  and  in 
the  house  of  Levi?  Simply  because  single  elements — Jesus 
eating  with  publicans,  scandal  of  the  Pharisees  with  reference 
to  his  freedom,  the  justification  of  Jesus — are  combined  to 
a  whole  through  the  tradition. 

Still  more  frequently  single  miraculous  narratives  favor 
us  with  some  insight  into  earlier  stages  of  the  tradition. 
The  narrative  of  the  cursing  of  the  fig  tree  is,  in  Mark,  a 
crass  miraculous  story  ;^  it  arose,  however,  from  a  simple  par- 

12:1-12.  22:15£E.  311;  12  ff.,  20  ff. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  375 

able,  which  Luke  has  preserved  for  us.^  Mark  himself  gives 
us  two  forms  of  the  tradition  of  the  stilling  of  the  tempest,^ 
which  coincide  in  the  main  thing — astonishment  at  Jesus' 
storm-controlling  power.  The  first  form  looks  like  a  fore- 
stage  of  the  second,  and  underlying  it  originally  is  a  still 
simpler  narrative  of  the  wonderful  calmness  and  trust  in  God 
on  the  part  of  Jesus  in  the  midst  of  the  storm.  And  thus 
in  the  case  of  many  miraculous  stories  it  may  be  assumed 
that  they  have  gradually  received  their  present  form  in  the 
course  of  oral  tradition. 

Notwithstanding  these  additions  and  changes,  one  may 
rate  very  highly  the  historical  worth  of  the  traditions 
communicated  to  us  by  Mark.  We  possess  here  a  great 
series  of  the  words  of  the  Lord,  which  give  us,  in  connection 
with  the  discourse-source,  the  clearest  idea  of  Jesus.  And, 
also,  the  reflection  of  the  historical  occasion  of  these  words, 
the  questions  of  opponents  or  disciples  which  they  answer, 
frequently  give  us  valuable  hints  as  to  the  original  meaning 
of  the  words.  Only  few  of  the  narratives  can  fairly  be  said 
to  be  pure  inventions,  although  it  is  frequently  impossible  to 
disengage  the  real  occurrences  from  the  exaggerated  tradi- 
tion, whose  first  literary  fixation  waited  forty  years!  Even 
so,  it  is  not  simply  the  total  impression  of  the  powerful,  the 
original,  the  creative,  but  also  many  a  single  detail,  derived 
from  reality,  that  speaks  to  us  from  these  narratives.  Jesus, 
sleeping  in  the  wild  storm  through  all  the  anxiety  of  the 
disciples;^  the  restless  doer  of  good,  who  is  too  busy  to  eat, 
and  about  whom  his  neighbors  are  alarmed;*  the  one  who  of 
nights  seeks  solitude,  who  flees  multitude  and  disciples  ever 
with  the  watchword:  Forward  to  new  tasks ;^  the  friend  of 
children;'  the  man  of  compassion,^  of  anger  and  sadness,^  of 


1  Luke  13:6-9. 

43:20. 

71:41. 

2  Mark  4:35-41;  6:45-52. 

51:35  ff. 

83:5. 

34:38. 

6  9:36;  10:16. 

376    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

love  and  sympathy  for  the  rich  man  who  seeks  so  earnestly 
after  g-oodness' — these  and  a  hundred  similar  brief  notices 
and  instantaneous  pictures  speak  for  themselves.  Naturally, 
we  can  speak  here  only  of  possibilities,  probabilities,  as  is 
the  case  with  reference  to  all  the  particulars  of  history.  But 
how  unassuming  and  tendencyless,  how  fresh  and  joyous, 
does  Mark  reflect  everything !  This  speaks  in  a  high  degree 
in  behalf  of  his  being  the  pure  mouth  of  good  tradition,  and 
the  writer  of  what  eyewitnesses  themselves  narrated  to  him. 
And  so  the  fact  remains  that  this  gospel,  in  spite  of  every- 
thing, is  a  work  of  extraordinary  value,  a  compilation  of  old 
and  genuine  materials  which  are  loosely  arranged  and  placed 
under  a  few  regulative  thoughts — a  gospel  composed  perhaps 
by  that  Mark  whom  the  New  Testament  knows,  and  of  whom 
Papias  heard  from  the  mouth  of  John. 

We  are  under  the  necessity  of  concluding  from  the  large 
discourse-material  in  Matthew  and  Luke  to  a  common  dis- 
course-source. To  be  sure,  the  latter  is  an  x,  and  it  will  be 
well  to  define  at  once  clearly  what  we  know  and  what  we  do 
not  know  about  this  x.  We  do  not  know  the  scope  of  the 
source.  We  only  know  that  the  common  discourses  of 
Matthew  and  Luke  belong  to  this  scope.  We  do  not  know 
the  arrangement  of  the  discourses  in  the  source;  we  only 
know  that  the  single  sayings  of  Jesus  were  grouped,  not 
according  to  their  temporal  sequence,  but  according  to 
homogeneity  of  theme;  e.  g.,  precepts  concerning  missions, 
John  the  Baptist,  Pharisees  and  scribes,  return  of  Christ, 
etc.  Very  frequently  we  do  not  know  the  wording  of  the 
source ;  we  know  it  with  certainty  only  where  Matthew  and 
Luke  verbally  agree,  or  where  one  of  them  has  undoubtedly 
changed  the  text  which  the  other  has  faithfully  handed  down. 
And  it  will  be  well  to  bear  in  mind  constantly  the  limits  of 
our  knowledge  as  we  seek  to  know  who  Jesus  was. 

110:21. 


SOUKOES  OF  THE  LiFE  OF  JeSUS        377 

The  language  of  the  source  which  Matthew  and  Luke 
employed  was  Greek,  for  it  is  in  the  Greek  wording  that  they 
coincide.  But  was  this  the  original  language  ?  We  are  led 
to  this  question  by  the  remark  of  Papias  that  Matthew  wrote 
the  words  of  the  Lord  in  Hebrew — /.  c,  Syriac — and  every- 
one then  translated  them  as  best  he  could.  We  now  know 
that  with  reference  to  our  Matthew  gospel  this  tradition  is 
false,  since  it  is  neither  an  original  Hebrew  work  nor  does  it 
come  from  the  apostle  Matthew.  What  Papias  says,  however, 
may  have  some  sort  of  reference  to  that  discourse-source. 

This  is,  indeed,  a  possibility  which  can  be  neither  refuted 
nor  proved.  So  precious  is  the  material  of  the  words  of  the 
Lord  which  the  collection  of  sayings  contains  that  an  eye- 
witness could  very  well  be  its  author.  Its  linguistic  char- 
acter is  such  that  one  is  at  times  reminded  of  a  Semitic  basic 
text.  And  if  the  apostle  Matthew  were  actually  its  author — 
*.  (?.,  its  compiler — one  could  understand  as  a  last  resort  how 
the  name  of  Matthew  was  mistakenly  attached  to  that  gospel 
which  appropriated  this  discourse-source.  But  there  is  no 
certainty  in  the  matter.  And  that  Matthew  and  Luke  were 
dependent  upon  the  same  Greek  fund  does  not  quite  comport 
with  the  information  that  there  were  so  many  different 
translations. 

But  the  question  in  general  is  as  to  whether  this  collec- 
tion of  sayings  is  a  unitary  work,  composed  by  one  man. 
As  in  the  case  of  Mark,  we  find  one  place  where  an  alien 
written  piece  has  been  accepted:  Matt.  23:  34-39;  Luke  11: 
49-51;  13  f.  It  is  the  threatening  of  penal  judgment  for  all 
the  blood  unrighteously  shed  and  the  cry  of  woe  over  Jeru- 
salem. As  Luke  shows  us,  we  have  here  a  citation,  and  the 
speaker  is  the  Wisdom  of  God.  It  is  the  Wisdom  of  God 
that  sends  prophets,  wise  men,  scribes,  to  the  Jewish  people ; 
but  in  vain;  those  sent  are  cruelly  maltreated.  Now,  there- 
fore, all  the   righteous  blood  from  Abel  the   righteous  to 


378    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 


Zachariah,  son  of  Barachiah,  who  was  killed  between  the 
temple  and  the  altar,  shall  come  upon  this  generation.  In 
vain  did  Wisdom  devote  its  loving  care  to  Jerusalem ;  there- 
fore their  house  shall  be  left  to  them  desolate,  and  no  longer 
shall  they  see  Wisdom  until  they  say:  "Blessed  is  he  that 
Cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord."  All  this  is  wholly  enig- 
matic and  impossible  in  the  mouth  of  Jesus — how  could 
Jesus  have  sent  forth  wise  men  and  scribes?  —  but  plain 
enough  when  one  takes  into  account  that  it  is  a  citation. 
Now,  Josephus  says  that  a  Zachariah,  son  of  Baruch,  was 
murdered  in  the  temple  by  Zealots  in  the  year  68  A.  D. 
Thus  the  date  of  this  citation  is  gained:  we  have  a  Jewish 
apocalyptic  fragment  from  some  Wisdom  document  shortly 
before  the  year  70.  Thus,  too,  it  becomes  clear  that  the 
death  of  Jesus  does  not  at  all  come  into  consideration  in  this 
threatening  of  judgment;  the  "how  often"  becomes  clear  also 
which  contradicts  the  entire  synoptic  narrative  of  the  single 
visit  of  Jesus  to  Jerusalem.  While  Luke  gives  the  words  as 
a  citation,  Matthew  simply  has  translated  them  into  the 
words  of  Jesus.  Perhaps  the  passage  cited  did  not  belong 
to  the  discourse-source  from  the  beginning. 

In  other  ways  one  espies  here  and  there  that  the  logia 
has  had  a  history  before  it  reached  Matthew  and  Luke, 
Jewish — nay.  Judaic — elements  coexist  in  it  with  words  of 
great  spiritual  freedom,  even  in  the  logia  of  Matthew,  which 
has  better  preserved  the  wording  of  the  source  than  Luke. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  discourse  on  righteousness,  on 
missions,  on  Pharisees,  there  are  harsh  national-Jewish 
utterances:  Jesus  the  fulfiller  of  the  law  even  to  jot  and 
tittle,'  prohibition  of  gentile  and  Samaritan  missions,^  obliga- 
tion to  observe  all  that  the  scribes  taught.*  In  these  utter- 
ances an  exclusively  Jewish  party  inimically  disposed  toward 
Paul  and  his  work  claims  Jesus.     But  if  one  reads  the  logia 

iMatt.  5:17f.  210:5.  3  23:3. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  379 

itself,  one  sees  that  its  spirit  is  strictly  moral,  not  at  all 
Judaically  limited.  The  discourse  on  the  Pharisees  con- 
demns the  hypocritical  Jewish  legality,  which  neglects  great 
matters  in  favor  of  the  petty.  The  discourse  on  righteous- 
ness, instead  of  stopping  with  the  iota  and  tittle  of  the  law, 
presses  on  into  the  interior  of  moral  disposition  with  the 
courageous  word:  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been  said  by 
them  of  old  time — but  I  say  unto  you!"  And  in  the  same 
discourse-source  there  was  the  narrative  of  the  pagan  cen- 
turion of  Capernaum,  who  put  Israel  to  shame  by  his  faith, 
and,  in  connection  therewith,  the  word  concerning  the  parti- 
cipation of  many  gentiles  in  the  kingdom  of  God,  instead  of 
the  "Children  of  the  Kingdom,"  i.  e.,  the  Jews.'  Finally, 
it  is  the  whole  ground-stock  of  this  discourse  which  hands 
down  to  us  the  kernel  of  the  gospel  in  its  uncorrupted  purity 
and  freedom.  How  the  contradiction  of  so  diverse  spirits  in 
the  same  writing  is  to  be  explained  we  do  not  surely  know. 
It  was  written  in  different  stages,  of  course;  passed  through 
various  editions.  This  is  of  importance  for  the  question: 
Who  was  Jesus?  in  order  that  those  all  too  limited,  narrow- 
hearted  parts  be  not  uncritically  referred  to  Jesus  himself. 
In  the  historical  employment  of  these  discourses  it  is 
important  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  source  itself  would  give 
no  temporal,  but  an  objective,  compilation  of  the  words  of 
the  Lord,  and  that  it  was  Matthew  and  Luke  who  first 
temporally  articulated  them  in  the  framework  of  the  gospel 
narrative.  From  this  it  follows  that  we  know  nothing  what- 
ever concerning  the  time  and  place  of  these  discourses.  The 
only  reason  for  transferring  the  words  against  Pharisees  and 
scribes  to  the  last  days  of  Jesus  in  Jerusalem  is  that  the 
evangelist  Matthew  found  in  that  passage  of  the  Mark 
narrative  a  fitting  point  of  connection  for  this  discourse; 
but  Matthew  knew  as  little  about  the  matter  as  Luke,  who 

18:5-13. 


380   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

located,  the  discourse  in  Galilee.  It  further  follows  from 
this  that  these  great  discourses  were  never  received  from 
Jesus,  but  owe  their  composition  throughout  to  the  hands  of  a 
compiler.  It  is  customary  to  admire  Jesus'  oratorical  talent 
and  gift  of  composition  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  in 
Matthew.  In  truth,  single  words  from  all  parts  of  the  life 
of  Jesus  are  gathered  together,  because  they  are  united  in 
the  same  theme:  the  will  of  God,  righteousness.  And  the 
themes  are  not  those  of  Jesus,  but  of  the  primitive  com- 
munity. 

In  the  course  of  more  than  three  decades  this  tradition 
of  the  words  of  the  Lord  may  have  lost  some  things  that 
were  valuable,  and  preserved  features  that  were  supplied 
later.  But,  on  the  whole,  the  historical  value  of  this 
discourse  is  greatest  of  all.  Together  with  the  words  of 
the  Lord  in  Mark,  they  give  us  the  truest  insight  into  the 
heart  of  the  gospel. 

A  final  specially  difficult  question  remains:  What  impor- 
tance attaches  to  those  narratives  and  words  which  either 
Matthew  alone,  or  Luke  alone,  delivers  to  us? 

Matthew  alone  communicates  to  us  the  great  number  of 
parables  and  single  words  of  Jesus.  The  parables  of  the 
treasure  in  the  field  and  of  the  pearl,  of  the  tares,  and  of  the 
draw-net,'  of  the  unmerciful  servant,'  of  the  day-laborers 
called  at  different  hours,^  of  the  two  sons,*  of  the  wise  and 
the  foolish  viro^ins,''  belono^  in  the  series  of  the  other  certain 
parables  of  Jesus.  Only  a  few  of  them — e,  g.,  the  tares  and 
the  draw-net,  the  wise  and  the  foolish  virgins — have  been 
worked  over  or  elaborated,  since  they  answer  somewhat  too 
distinctly  questions  and  doubts,  not  of  Jesus,  but  of  later 
Christianity.  Mention  may  be  made  of  the  following  say- 
ings:   the  words  of  the  Lord  concerning  alms,  prayer,  and 

1  Matt.,  chap.  13.         2  chap.  IS.         3 Chap.  20.         ••Chap.  21.         5 Chap.  25. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus     381 

fasts;'  single  sayings  concerning  the  sabbath;^  the  word  con- 
cerning the  angels  of  the  little  ones,*  concerning  those 
circumcised  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  God/  concerning 
the  reward  of  the  twelve  apostles  f  the  closing  word  concern- 
ing the  last  judgment.®  Many  of  these  sayings  are  extremely 
enigmatic — the  angels  of  the  little  ones,  those  circumcised 
for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  God — but  they  are  not  there- 
fore inconceivable  m  the  mouth  of  Jesus.  At  times  we 
distinctly  detect  later  elaboration.  The  compilation  of  the 
words  concerning  alms,  prayer,  fasts,  originates  from  a  good 
Jewish  Christian  compiler,  who,  of  course,  placed  more 
emphasis  on  the  thought  of  reward  than  Jesus  did.  The 
closing  words  concerning  the  last  judgment  do  not  come 
directly  from  Jesus.  Jesus  did  not  consider  himself  as  the 
judge  of  the  world,  nor  would  he  have  said  that  all  the 
gentiles  were  judged  solely  according  to  whether  they  sup- 
ported the  itinerant  Christian  brothers  or  not.  All  this  is 
the  mode  of  thought  of  apostolic  and  post-apostolic  times, 
ever  faithful  in  one  main  point:  the  high  appreciation  of 
mercy,  the  original  spirit  of  Jesus.  But  with  this  the 
historically  valuable  material  peculiar  to  Matthew  is 
exhausted.  What  remains  that  is  peculiar  to  him  comes 
under  the  rubric  of  legend.  This  is  especially  true  of  the 
genuinely  Catholic  word  to  Peter.'  It  will  not  do  to  interpret 
the  words  in  a  Protestant  way,  to  the  effect  that  not  Peter, 
but  only  the  faith,  the  disposition  which  Peter  then  expressed, 
was  the  rock  of  the  church.  The  Catholics  are  entirely  right 
in  apprehending  the  word  in  a  Roman-Catholic  sense, 
but  precisely  thereby  is  the  evidence  furnished  that  Jesus 
did  not  speak  the  word,  but  that  it  is  a  saga  of  a  later  time, 
glorifying  Peter.  Under  this  same  head  of  legend  chaps.  1 
and  2  belong ;  also  the  whole  edition  in  Matthew  of  the  story 
of  the  passion  and  the  resurrection  (the  Judas  legend,  the 

iChap.6.      2i2:5£E.,llf,      318:10.      *19:10-12.     519:28.      625:31-46.      7i6:16ff. 


382    The  Finality  op  the  Cheistian  Keligion 

wife  of  Pilate,  nature-miracles  at  the  death  of  Jesus,  the 
watch  at  the  grave,  and  so  forth).  It  is  not  meant  that 
Matthew  himself  invented  these  narratives;  frequently,  as  in 
the  infancy  stories,  several  hands  have  been  active  therein. 
In  all  these  cases,  the  sole  task  of  the  investigator  is  to  get 
at  the  motive  of  these  legends,  which  is  usually  evident.  Thus 
in  the  infancy  stories,  Jewish  instinct  of  legitimation 
(Davidic  genealogy),  apologetic  proof  of  fulfilled  predictions 
(Bethlehem  and  so  forth),  connection  of  the  new  tradition 
of  Bethlehem  with  the  old  of  Nazareth  (Matt.,  chap.  2),  new 
interpretation  of  the  Son  of  God  and  of  his  origin  (con- 
ceived by  the  Holy  Spirit),  defense  of  this  faith  against  the 
slanderous  interpretations  of  the  Jews  (dream  of  Joseph), 
have  co-operated  in  the  given  order  until  the  narrative  came 
to  be  in  the  form  which  we  now  read  in  the  first  two  chapters. 

The  quite  late  and  the  quite  early  coexist  in  this  gospel  as 
nowhere  else.  Everywhere  is  the  gospel  far  removed  in 
point  of  time  from  the  person  of  Jesus.  But  it  has  preserved 
old  traditions  with  special  fidelity. 

Since  Luke  writes  in  the  prologue  of  many  who  attempted 
evangelical  authorship  before  him,  the  question  as  to  further 
ivritten  sources  naturally  arises.  Their  2^ossible  employment 
by  Luke  may  be  assumed.  Certainty  is  scarcely  demon- 
strable in  the  matter. 

Some  believe  that  he  used  a  written  Syriac  tradition  in 
chaps.  1  and  2.  There  is  a  striking  difference  in  style 
between  the  fine  Greek  prologue^  and  the  subsequent  nar- 
rative of  a  Semitic  color.  The  piety  of  chaps.  1  and  2  is 
Jewish-Christian.  Nevertheless,  conclusion  to  a  written 
source  seems  somewhat  hasty.  The  language  of  this  chap- 
ter is,  on  the  whole,  the  Greek  of  the  Septuagint,  which 
was  accessible  to  Luke;  that  he  attached  importance  in 
the  prologue  to   finer  expression  is  not  surprising  in  the 

1  Luke  1:4. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  383 

case  of  this  man,  who  is  highly  capable  of  linguistic  varia- 
tion. Added  to  this,  it  is  hardly  possible  for  this  chapter 
ever  to  have  existed  by  itself,  since  its  main  thoughts  are 
none  other  than  those  of  the  entire  gospel.  It  is  the  evangel- 
ist Luke  who  connects  the  Nazareth  tradition  and  the  Beth- 
lehem prediction  with  a  world-historical  providence;  who 
answers  Mark's  question,  "Is  not  the  Baptist  greater  than 
Jesus?"  by  parallelizing  the  stories  of  their  birth  and  by  the 
constant  degrading  of  the  Baptist  below  Jesus.  All  this  has 
importance  only  in  connection  with  the  entire  gospel,  not  by 
itself  alone.  It  has  further  been  supposed  that  source  and 
redactor  could  be  distinguished  by  the  circumstance  that  the 
former  considers  Jesus  as  son  of  the  Davidic  Joseph,  and 
therefore  speaks  disingenuously  of  the  "father,"  the  "parents" 
of  Jesus;  while  the  redactor  Luke  subsequently  introduces 
the  later  view  of  the  fatherless  generation  of  Jesus  by  the 
insertion  of  1 :  34  f .  But  even  this  assumption  is  not  neces- 
sary; is,  indeed,  improbable,  since  a  parallel  is  drawn  up 
intentionally  between  the  miracle  as  regards  Elizabeth  and 
the  greater  miracle  as  regards  Mary ;  also  between  the  unbe- 
lief of  Zachariah  and  the  faith  of  Mary.  Luke  could  still 
call  Joseph  "father,"  since  it  was  through  him  that  the 
Davidic  genealogy  reached  Jesus.  The  supposition  is  more 
plausible  that  Luke  received,  shaped,  elaborated  all  kinds  of 
earlier,  partly  Jewish-Christian  traditions,  with  rich  feeling 
for  poesy  and  precious  apprehension  of  the  sentiment  of  so 
many  faithful,  pious  souls  in  the  time  of  Jesus. 

There»is  another  reason  why  we  can  say  scarcely  anything 
more  certain,  as  to  the  main  part  of  his  gospel,  concerning 
his  sources.  Luke  has  so  composed  his  writing  that  he  has 
broken  into  almost  all  other  sources  of  material  with  two 
great  interpolations  of  Mark.  Within  these  interpolations, 
however,  he  has  himself  formed  new  connections  out  of  the 
discourse-source  and  the  fund  peculiar  to  him  taken  together, 


384   The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

everywhere  severing  the  old  connections  of  his  sources,  and 
in  this  way  robbing  us  of  the  possibility  of  knowing  what 
belonged  together  originally. 

We  have  no  other  recourse  than  to  separate  the  single 
sections  from  the  artificial  framework  of  Luke,  and  test  the 
worth  of  each  by  itself  alone,  as  we  must  do  in  the  case  of 
Mark  also. 

Above  all  else,  we  are  attracted  by  the  many  parables 
which  Luke  alone  delivers  to  us,  on  which,  moreover,  the 
unique  worth  of  his  writing  depends.^  Here,  if  anywhere, 
is  the  supposition  warranted  that  Luke  found  these  parables 
in  a  written  source.  But  the  evangelist  is  responsible  for 
the  location  of  the  narratives,  the  place  in  which  they  now 
appear,  and  very  frequently  for  the  framework ;  that  is,  the 
introduction  and  the  explicative  conclusion.  The  degree  in 
which  Luke  occasionally  ignores  the  original  meaning  of  a 
parable,  and  forces  upon  it  an  alien,  artificial  meaning,  is  best 
seen  in  the  parable  of  the  good  Samaritan.  Its  original 
purpose  is  manifest  from  its  content,  from  the  opposition  of 
priest  and  Levite  there,  Samaritan  here:  mercy  is  better  than 
sanctity,  even  if  the  merciful  is  a  Samaritan,  and  the  saint  a 
priest  or  Levite.  The  effect  of  the  contrast  is  similar  to  that 
aimed  at  in  the  parable  of  Pharisee  and  publican.  And  what 
does  Luke  make  out  of  it?  He  puts  it  in  the  missionary 
group  of  chap.  10,  because  it  is  simply  the  Samaritan  that 
interests  him,  because  he  finds  something  here  concerning 
the  relation  between  Samaritans  and  Jews.  Ordinarily,  a 
Jew  will  know  nothing  of  a  Samaritan.  To  a  Jew,  a  neigh- 
bor is  simply  one  of  his  own  blood.  But  here  a  Samaritan 
is  neighbor  to  a  Jew.  Hence,  the  introductory  question: 
"Who  is  my  neighbor?"  which  is  repeated  at  the  close: 
"Who  is  the  neighbor  to  him  that  fell  among  thieves?" 
And  the   answer  is  that  the  inquiring  Jew  must  call  the 

1  See  chaps.  7-18. 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  385 

Samaritan  his  neighbor.  But  how  strangely  artificial  is  this 
conclusion,  where  everyone  would  expect  the  opposite  ques- 
tion ;  how  completely  do  the  priest  and  Levite  thereby  drop 
out  of  the  question !  It  all  becomes  simple  and  grand,  if  the 
frame  be  stricken  off  and  the  parable  speak  for  itself  alone. 
But  the  case  does  not  stand  much  better  with  all  the  frame- 
works of  the  Lukan  parables.  They  are  almost  all  artificial ; 
only  at  times  the  artificiality  must  be  set  to  the  account  of 
some  earlier  tradition.  The  two  parables  of  chap.  16  have 
passed  through  various  hands  until  they  have  found  their 
present  form.  In  the  case  of  the  rich  man  and  Lazarus,  Luke 
or  some  earlier  writer  seems  to  have  invented  the  second  half, 
from  16 :  27  on.  The  parable  has  its  natural  conclusion 
where  the  rich  man  receives  the  answer  that  their  lots  are 
now  changed.'  From  this  we  know  that  we  are  never  to 
count  a  rich  man  blessed  on  account  of  his  riches,  nor  a  poor 
man  unhappy  on  account  of  his  proverty ;  and  this  was  the 
point.  The  conclusion/  on  the  other  hand,  which  treats  the 
possibility  of  the  conversion  of  the  rich  man's  brothers:  Do 
law  and  prophets  suffice?  Is  a  resurrection  from  the  dead 
necessary?  —  this  conclusion  leads  the  reader  to  entirely 
different  thoughts,  and  suits  the  false  introduction^  which 
addresses  the  parable  to  the  Pharisees,  with  whom,  however, 
it  has  nothing  whatever  to  do.  Uniformly  our  joy  in  the 
parables  grows  in  the  degree  that  we  succeed  in  freeing 
ourselves  from  the  interpretative  reflections  of  the  evan- 
gelist, and  in  surrendering  ourselves  to  the  original  power 
of  the  parable  itself. 

Apart  from  the  parables,  Luke  has  preserved  some  words 
of  Jesus  spoken  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  which  cast  a  clear 
light  upon  his  character  and  his  consciousness  of  his  calling ; 
e.  g.,  the  word  about  the  falling  of  Satan  from  heaven;* 
about  the  fire  which  Jesus  came  to  kindle;*  the  answer  to 

U6:25.  216:27-31.  316: 14  f.  ■*10:18.  512:49  f. 


386    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

him  who  desired  a  judgment  in  the  controversy  with  his 
brother  concerning  his  inheritance;'  etc.  More  important 
still,  for  the  wealth  of  the  tradition  from  which  Luke  drew, 
are  the  single  short  stories  or  notices,  which  Luke  reflects  as 
he  found  them :  the  names  of  the  women  accompanying  Jesus  f 
the  refusal  of  the  Samaritans  to  receive  him,  together  with 
the  impression  which  this  made  upon  the  disciples;^  Mary 
and  Martha;^  Jesus'  answer  to  the  woman  who  cried, 
"Blessed  is  the  one  that  bore  him;"^  the  reference  to  Herod 
the  Fox;®  Zacchseus.^  It  is,  of  course,  conceivable  that  Luke 
drew  these  exceedingly  valuable  items  from  some  lost  evan- 
gelical writing. 

Along  with  this  there  are,  of  course,  numerous  instances 
in  which  the  evangelist  has  communicated  extremely  doubt- 
ful traditions,  even  in  case  he  did  not  invent  them.  Among 
these  is  the  narrative  of  the  ten  lepers,  only  one  of  whom,  a 
Samaritan,  manifested  gratitude.**  We  know  that  Luke  can- 
celed the  prohibition  of  the  Samaritan  mission  in  the  logia,® 
and  substituted  therefor  everything  that  was  favorable  to  the 
Samaritans :  such  writing  is  tendential.  A  genuine  word  of 
the  Lord'**  underlies  the  narrative  of  the  healing  of  one  with 
the  dropsy  on  the  sabbath  day."  As  occasion  to  this  a 
miraculous  story  is  formed,  whose  wording  has  the  appear- 
ance of  Mark  8 : 1-6.  The  beginning  of  Jesus'  preaching  in 
Nazareth'"  seems  to  belong  entirely  to  Luke.  His  datum 
was  the  rejection  of  Jesus  at  Nazareth,'^  from  which  he  shaped 
his  new  narrative,  introducing  Jesus  as  fulfiller  of  prophecy, 
and  representing  him  as  gaining  from  his  rejection  by  his 
father-city  an  intimation  of  his  rejection  by  his  fatherland. 
And  yet  in  this  connection  Jesus  is  said  to  have  spoken  to 
the  Nazarenes  of  his  miracles  in  Capernaum,  which,  however, 

I12:13f.  *  10: 38-42.  '19:2-10.  WC/.  Matt.  12:11.       124:16-29 

2  8:2f.  5ii:27f.  8i7:ii-i9.  u  Luke  14: 1-6.  13  Mark,  chap.  6. 

39:21f.  613:31£P.  9Matt.lO:5. 


Sources  of  the  Life  op  Jesus      387 

he  had  not  yet  done!  In  the  narrative  concerning  the 
sinful  woman  ^  Luke  seems  to  have  combined  all  sorts  of 
different  material:  the  parable  of  the  two  debtors,  the 
anointing  by  a  sinful  woman,  the  anointing  at  Bethany  in 
the  house  of  Simon  according  to  Mark,  to  which  he  then 
supplies  a  new  conclusion  himself.  The  raising  of  the 
widow's  son  at  Nain,^  and  Peter's  miraculous  draught  of  fish,^ 
are  drawn  from  current  legfends. 

It  has  been  supposed  that  Luke  drew  the  special  features 
of  his  account  of  the  passion  and  the  resurrection  from  an 
earlier  source:  the  thieves  on  the  cross,  the  two  disciples  on 
the  way  to  Emmaus,  etc.,  were  derived  from  such  source. 
All  this  is  entirely  uncertain:  if  Luke  did  employ  tradition, 
they  need  not  have  been  written  as  yet ;  above  all,  they  need 
not  have  been  historically  reliable.  It  is  not  true  that  Luke 
enriched  the  earlier  exposition  of  Mark  by  the  story  of  the 
thieves  on  the  cross;  but  Luke  replaced  Jesus'  violent  cry  of 
agony  in  Mark  with  a  more  consoling  saying.  So,  too,  he 
canceled  the  words  of  Mark,  which  pointed  to  the  appear- 
ances of  Jesus  in  Galilee,  in  favor  of  his  Jerusalem  resurrec- 
tion stories.  There  are  also  many  affecting  details — the 
healing  of  the  soldier's  ear,*  the  look  that  Jesus  gave  Peter,^ 
the  sorrowful,  tender  word  to  the  women  of  Jerusalem^ — 
which  can  scarcely  be  rescued  by  pushing  them  back  from 
Luke  himself  to  some  earlier  tradition.  These  additions 
must  have  arisen  some  time. 

But  the  large  part  the  evangelist  took  in  the  formation 
and  shaping  of  his  narratives  is  by  no  means  in  a  position  to 
abridge  the  worth  of  his  large,  rich  treasure  of  priceless 
parables  and  stories,  by  means  of  which  Jesus  himself  speaks 
to  us  freshly  and  originally.  The  outcome,  therefore,  is  that 
the  fund  peculiar  to  the  two  evangelists,  in  spite  of  its  very 
mixed  character,  has  claim  enough  upon  our  gratitude. 

1  Luke  7:36-50.        2  7:11-17.         3  5:4-9.         -122:51.         5  22:16.         « 23: 28-31. 


388    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

We  are  at  the  end  of  a  long  way.  In  the  first  place,  we 
must  limit  our  material  to  the  four  canonical  gospels  as 
sources.  Then,  John  drops  away,  and  the  synoptics  remain. 
Next,  their  sources  must  be  substituted  for  them:  Mark,  the 
logia,  the  fund  peculiar  to  Matthew  and  Luke  each — ^  these 
are  to  be  put  in  the  foreground.  Finally,  the  investigation 
of  these  sources  discovers  more  original — but  also,  of  course, 
more  scanty — traditions.  These  traditions,  which  Mark  and 
the  logia  have  collected,  which  appear  singly  here  and  there 
in  the  special  fund  of  Matthew  and  Luke,  are  our  last  court 
of  appeal  as  we  seek  to  answer  the  question :  Who  was  Jesus  ? 

In  the  course  of  this  long  way,  much  has  everywhere 
fallen  away  which,  for  a  millennium,  has  belonged  to  the 
stable  picture  of  Jesus.  What  remains  seems  at  first  sight 
to  be  miserably  poor  and  scanty.  But  if  it  were  only  firm 
and  reliable!  If  it  only  sufficed  to  give  us  an  answer  to  the 
cardinal  question:  Who  was  Jesus? 

It  does  not  belong  to  this  chapter  to  answer  this  question. 
But,  as  indicated  in  a  previous  footnote,  since  the  substance 
of  this  discussion  has  been  drawn — often,  indeed,  by  rough 
translation — from  Professor  Wernle,  an  historical  critic  of 
the  first  rank,  the  chapter  may  very  well  close  with  a  repro- 
duction of  an  outline  answer  to  the  question  as  given  by 
him.  In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  return  to  the  question  in 
a  larger  way,  on  our  own  account. 

What  can  we  know  of  Jesus  himself  ?  What  can  we  know  ? 
Wernle' s  answer  is  as  follows: 

On  the  basis  of  the  earliest  or  oldest  sources,  we  can  write 
no  biography,  no  so-called  "  Life  of  Jesus."  This  would  ever 
have  been  possible,  were  Mark  a  strictly  historical  document, 
and  did  the  discourse  portions  actually  belong  where  Matthew 
or  Luke  has  placed  them.  But  the  discourses  in  their 
source  lack  all  temporal  fixation,  and  Mark  is  only  a  compiler 
of  single  traditions,  which  he  first — so  runs  the  hypothesis — 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus      389 

"unified  to  a  whole.  Mark,  moreover,  lacks  all  personal 
knowledge  of  localities,  and  he  equally  lacks  any  clear  knowl- 
edge of  the  temporal  course  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  And  in 
matters  concerning  which  Mark  as  historian  leaves  us  in  the 
lurch,  how  can  we  know  anything  better  today  ?  It  is  only 
of  a  very  few  words  of  Jesus,  accordingly,  that  we  know 
when  and  where  they  were  spoken.  Thus,  too,  the  possibility 
of  tracing  an  inner  development  of  Jesus  must  be  surren- 
dered. Any  distinction  between  a  Galilean  period  of  Jesus 
and  a  Jerusalem  period — this  is  entirely  in  the  air.  One 
clear  point  is  that  the  messianic  faith  did  not  exist  from  the 
beginning,  but  from  a  definite  time,  in  the  circle  of  the  dis- 
ciples. Also,  we  may  learn  from  Mark  that  Jesus  did  not 
forecast  his  death  from  the  beginning.  The  earliest  sure 
memorabilia  reach  back  to  the  point  where  Peter  and  his 
companions  become  disciples  of  Jesus.  Valuable  historical 
single  material,  building-stones  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  are  not 
wanting.  But  the  plan  of  the  building  is  lost  beyond  recov- 
ery, because  the  earliest  disciples  attached  no  importance 
to  such  historical  connection,  but  rather  cared  only  for  that 
in  the  single  words  and  deeds  of  Jesus  which  awakened  faith, 
required  obedience. 

This  would  not  be  so  great  an  injury,  could  we  but  ascer- 
tain with  sufficient  clearness  what  Jesus  did  and  willed.  It 
is  precisely  here,  however,  that  we  confront  the  final,  the 
greatest,  difficulty. 

We  said  that  the  last  court  of  appeal  which  we  reach  in 
the  investigation  of  the  sources  is  those  oldest  traditions 
which  Mark  and  the  logia  have  compiled,  whose  gleaning 
Matthew  and  Luke  preserve.  But,  evermore,  traditions  are 
something  other  than  Jesus  himself.  They  contain  the 
possibility  of  corruption  and  transformation.  Primarily, 
they  reflect  the  faith  of  the  earliest  Christians — a  faith  which 
grew  up  in  the  course  of  four  decades,    which  underwent 


390    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

change  also.  Between  Jesus  and  us  there  is  ever  the  faith  of 
the  primitive  community  as  the  immediate  object  of  inquiry. 
From  this  it  follows  that  in  all  the  points  where  the  faith 
of  the  primitive  community  itself  is  in  movement  and  flux 
we  have  the  greatest  difficulty  in  laying  hold  of  Jesus  him- 
self. These  points  are:  Ckristology,  pictures  of  the  fuiure, 
belief  in  miracles,  attitude  to  the  law  and  to  the  ncdion. 
Immediately  in  the  conception  of  Jesus  great  titles  confront 
us:  ^'Christ,"  "Son  of  God,"  "Son  of  man."  We  see  how 
the  primitive  community  sought  to  interpret  the  person  of 
Jesus  by  means  of  these  titles,  and,  indeed,  on  the  basis  of 
their  faith  in  his  resurrection,  which  suddenly  exalted  this 
person  into  miraculous  glory.  But  what  attitude  Jesus  him- 
self assumed  toward  these  views  —  this  we  know  far  less 
clearly.  It  would  be  an  excess,  of  course,  to  deny  that  he 
had  faith  in  his  messianic  calling ;  but  at  what  time  he  began 
to  hold  that  he  was  the  Messiah,  and  in  what  sense;  what 
precisely  he  had  in  mind  by  it;  whether  he  called  himself 
"Son  of  God,"  and  in  what  sense;  whether  the  title  "Son  of 
man"  is  one  that  he  gave  himself;  whether  he  definitely 
promised  his  return — these  are  questions  which  we  can  only 
partially  and  approximately  answer,  just  because  it  is  the 
faith  of  the  primitive  community  which  is  primarily  given  to 
us.  The  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  are  combined  with 
his  messianic  dignity,  for  the  primitive  community.  The 
suffering  Messiah — this  is  the  Christian  confession.  But 
what  was  Jesus'  own  thought  concerning  this?  Did  he 
definitely  foretell  his  death  ?  How  did  he  conceive  his  death  ? 
It  is  very  much  easier  to  ask  these  questions  than  it  is  to 
answer  them.  All  the  thoughts  of  Jesus  concerning  the 
worth  and  the  necessity  of  his  death  are  first  of  all  thoughts 
of  the  primitive  community;  only  this  do  we  know  definitely. 
Whether  Jesus  himself  utters  them — this  is  precisely  the 
question.     As  regards  the  future  hope,  all  Christians  confess- 


SOUECES    OF    THE    LiPE    OF   JeSUS  391 

edly  remained  pronounced  Jews ;  was  this  true  of  Jesus  in  the 
same  degree  ?  Who  dares  assert  that  he  knows  accurately  how 
Jesus  thought  of  the  great  catastrophe,  and  what  the  disciples 
first  supplied?  The  whole  problem  is  clear  as  soon  as  Mark, 
chap.  13,  is  before  us.  It  is  incredibly  difficult  to  say:  Thus 
Jesus  hoped,  thus  he  did  not.  In  studying  the  question  of 
the  Son  of  man,  shall  we  ever  come  to  see  Jesus  himself 
clearly?  A  sifting  of  the  miracle-faith  of  the  primitive 
community  is  entirely  impossible — a  sundering  of  the  real 
Jesus  from  the  miraculous  saga  of  the  primitive  community. 
What  we  clearly  know  is  simply  the  miracle-faith  and  the 
miracle-apologetics  of  the  oldest  Christianity.  We  infer,  e.  g., 
from  Jesus'  answer  to  the  Baptist,  "The  blind  see,  the  lame 
walk,  the  deaf  hear,  lepers  are  cleansed,  the  dead  are  raised," 
that  the  Christians  at  the  time  of  the  redaction  of  the  logia 
believed  in  a  multitude  of  such  miracles,  even  in  several  cases 
of  resuscitation  from  the  dead.  But  it  does  not  follow  from 
this  that  Jesus  spoke  the  words  in  this  form,  let  alone  that  he 
had  awakened  several  from  the  dead.  Our  oldest  traditions-, 
show  that  already  all  things  were  held  to  be  possible  to  Jesus :; 
but  how  he  himself  thought  on  this  subject  is  scarcely  access- 
ible to  us.  Finally,  upon  the  appearance  of  Paul,  questions 
concerning  the  law  and  missions  became  burning  in  the  primi- 
tive community.  It  was  sought  to  draw  Jesus  himself  into 
the  controversy.  To  one  he  becomes  patron  of  the  gentile 
missions ;  to  another,  of  Jewish  missions.  What  was  Jesus* 
attitude  to  these  questions?  Had  he  had  such  a  question  at 
all  ?  Is  not  every  attempt  idle  to  know  something  from  him 
which  did  not  lie  in  his  horizon  ?  Was  Mark  right  when  he 
attributed  freedom  and  breadth  to  him  ?  Was  Jesus  so  nar- 
row as  Matthew  pictured  him?  And,  then,  the  breach  with 
Israel,  the  rejection  of  the  temple — did  all  this  stand  so 
clearly  before  his  soul  as  we  now  read  it,  or  even  more 
clearly  than  his  limited  disciples  could  apprehend  it? 


392    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

We  go  forward  in  all  these  problems  only  when  we  set 
out  from  this  fact:  that  which  we  firmly  have  in  our  hands  is 
the  faith  of  the  primitive  community.  That  faith  can  be  an 
efPect,  in  whole  or  in  part,  of  which  Jesus  is  cause;  that  faith 
can  also  be  carried  back  into  the  word  and  life  of  Jesus. 
There  is  therefore  no  reason  for  despair  or  resignation.  A 
part  of  the  work  is  already  done  when  the  task  and  difficul- 
ties are  clearly  known. 

And,  finally,  all  this  is  not  the  main  thing.  They  are 
mostly  problems  of  periphery.  What  Jesus  was,  and  what 
he  willed,  do  not  depend  upon  the  answer  to  these  questions. 
The  main  thing  is  how  Jesus  viewed  God,  the  world,  and 
man,  and  how  he  answered  the  cardinal  question:  What  is 
the  main  thing  in  the  sight  of  God?     What  is  religion? 

This,  however,  we  know  and  see  in  the  clear  light  of  day. 
From  the  fulness  of  his  parables  and  sayings,  and  from 
numerous  memorabilia  of  the  moment,  Jesus  speaks  to  us  as 
clearly  and  definitely  as  if  he  were  our  contemporary.  No 
man  in  the  world  can  say  it  is  uncertain  and  obscure  as  to 
how  Jesus  thought  concerning  this  main  matter,  which  is 
also  the  main  matter  for  us  today  still.  When  we  approach 
history  with  the  question.  Who  was  Jesus?  the  thing  we 
desire  to  know  first  of  all  is:  What  has  this  man  hoped, 
believed,  loved  ?  What  did  the  name  of  God  signify  to  him  ? 
How  did  he  view  man  and  his  powers?  With  what  senti- 
ment did  he  look  upon  the  process  of  the  world?  What 
ideal  of  humanity  filled  his  soul?  By  what  standards  did 
he  judge  the  worth  of  man,  good  and  evil,  sin  and  duty? 
It  is  wonderful  how  in  all  these  points  the  great  discourses 
of  the  logia  give  us  the  same  answer  as  the  conversations  of 
Mark  and  the  parables  which  only  Luke  or  only  Matthew 
has.  And  they  are  always  clear,  definite  answers — simple, 
unsought,  springing  from  the  depth  of  the  heart  and  not  from 
the  logic  of  the  understanding.     And  as  to  the  main  point: 


Sources  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  393 

Upon  what  does  all  depend  before  God  ?  Wliat  decides  con- 
cerning heaven  and  hell?  we  can  see  that  a  thoroughgoing 
change  in  the  thought  of  the  disciples  could  not  destroy 
historical  fidelity.  For  all  authors  and  compilers  of  the 
evangelical  writings  since  the  earliest  time,  faith  in  Jesus 
the  Messiah  is  the  primary  thing  which  separates  Christian 
and  non-Christian  —  the  fundamental  presupposition  for  all 
the  conclusions  that  follow.  But  they  have  first  carried  this 
back  into  the  words  of  Jesus.  In  the  words  of  Jesus,  the 
main  thing  is  confidence  in  God,  piwiti)  of  heart,  merciful- 
ness, humility,  placabilitu,  yearning  —  tliis  and  nothing  else 
besides.  This  is  God's  will,  as  is  set  forth  in  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  Who  does  it  is  Jesus'  mother  and  sister  and 
brother.  And  if  Christianity,  millennium  at  a  time,  has 
forgotten  that  which  its  Master  first  of  all  and  most  of  all 
willed,  today  it  shines  forth  from  the  gospels  once  yet  again 
as  clearly  and  wonderfully  as  if  the  sun  had  just  risen,  and 
banished  all  the  ghosts  and  shadows  of  night  with  its  tri- 
umphant beams. 

If,  then,  along  therewith,  much  with  reference  to  this  man 
is  and  abides  enigmatic,  this  does  not  frighten  us ;  we  can  see 
that  it  must  be  so.  We  divine  that  the  soul  of  which  this 
great,  wonderful  new  thing  took  possession  for  the  first  time, 
in  order  that  through  it  there  might  be  a  power  redeeming 
humanity,  must  be  seized  by  entirely  different  sentiments 
and  excitations  than  the  average  of  us  petty  men;  that  here 
on  the  summit  of  history,  from  contact  of  God  with  humanity, 
of  the  eternal  with  transitoriness,  mysteries,  wonders,  super- 
human thoughts  as  to  vocation,  must  shine  forth  which,  clad 
in  the  passing  garb  of  temporal  Jewish  ideas  and  words, 
strike  us  in  many  ways  as  bizarre  and  strange.  Even  this 
we  can  understand,  viz.,  that  precisely  this  mystery  of  a  crea- 
tive revelation-person  has  become  the  greatest  agency  for 
founding  community,  that  faith  in  Jesus  founded  the  church. 


394    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion        : 

But  today  all  this,  which  was  once  of  secondary  importance, 
has  now  come  to  be  primary  for  us  who  are  sated  with  Chris- 
tology  and  yearn  after  God.  The  closer  we  get  to  Jesus  in 
the  tradition,  the  more  does  everything  dogmatic  and  the- 
ological recede.  We  see  a  man  who,  through  his  clear  word, 
helps  us  rightly  to  understand  ourselves,  the  world,  above  all 
else  God;  and  who  goes  with  us  in  the  extremities  and  con- 
flicts of  the  present,  as  a  most  faithful  friend  and  leader 
upon  whom  we  may  confidently  rely. 

How  far  now  this  result  of  an  investigation  of  the  source 
is  destructive,  or  liberating  and  uplifting,  remains  to  be 
decided  by  the  reader  himself. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  ESSENCE  OP  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION:    JESUS 

So,  THEN,  we  have  hearkened,  as  was  our  duty,  to  a 
rehearsal,  sufficient  for  our  purpose,  of  the  net  results  of  a 
century  of  scientific  work  by  specialists  upon  the  synoptic 
problem.  While  the  presuppositions,  method,  and  conclusions 
of  only  a  single  scholar.  Professor  Wernle,  have  been  repro- 
duced, they  are  yet  typical.  Henceforth,  the  difficulties 
which  confront  us,  as  we  strive  to  know  who  the  real  Jesus 
was,  what  he  said  and  did,  and  what  he  wanted,  must  be 
faithfully  and  dispassionately  dealt  with  by  apologists. 
Even  at  the  risk  of  irksome  prolixity,  it  is  advisable  to 
give  a  brief  recapitulation  of  these  difficulties  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  chapter. 

Jesus  left  no  literary  remains.  Even  if  he  did  write  in 
the  sand,  according  to  the  story  about  the  adulteress,  we  still 
do  not  know  what  he  wrote.  Evangelical  proclamation  as 
the  gospel  history  mainly  is,  we  yet  do  not  possess  a  single 
word  directly  from  the  preacher  himself.  Everything  is 
mediated  to  us  through  others.  It  is  a  duty  of  conscience 
today  to  be  seized  with  the  significance  of  this  fact.  The 
limitations  of  authenticity  thus  drawn  cannot  be  honorably 
forgotten  by  the  apologist. 

Immediately  after  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus,  his  disciples 
—  those  of  them  who  walked  and  talked  with  him  in  the 
familiar  and  friendly  Galilean  period — worshiped  him  as  a 
divine  being,  throned  in  heaven,  possessing  all  power  and 
authority,  judging  the  living  and  the  dead,  and  so  on.  This 
conviction  of  theirs — of  this  there  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt — suffused,  transfigured,  altered  what  they  had  for- 
merly experienced  in  their  association  with  the  man  Jesus. 

395 


396    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

In  tliis  new  light  of  the  dehumanization  and  spiritualization 
of  Jesus,  if  not  of  his  complete  deification,  it  was  psychologi- 
cally inevitable  that  all  the  features  and  episodes  of  his  life 
and  history  should  shine  and  be  interpreted.  The  memora- 
bilia of  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus  suffered  emotional  recon- 
struction. Many  original  colors  have  vanished  in  the  golden 
glory,  from  the  supernal  sky,  which  lies  upon  the  whole 
scene.  Upon  the  stratum  of  historical  fact  are  superposed 
strata  deposited  by  the  faith  and  feeling  of  the  disciples. 
These  strata  are  not  always  easily  distinguishable,  so  that 
one  can  say  of  the  record :  This  is  fact ;  this  is  interpreta- 
tion or  embellishment  of  the  fact.  The  exact  certainty  which 
science  seeks  is  unattainable,  and  the  whole  gamut  of  prob- 
ability must  be  run.^ 

Intimately  connected  with  the  difficulty  just  mentioned  is 
the  fact  that,  as  soon  as  the  first  disciples  and  primitive  com- 
munity became  firmly  convinced  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah, 
they  could  not  help  transferring  to  him  a  catalogue  of 
predicates,  concepts,  and  stories.  There  w^as  at  that  time  a 
messianic  dogmatics  which,  fluctuating  in  particulars,  was 
quite  definite  in  main  outline.  The  whole  Old  Testament 
had  long  been  investigated  from  the  messianic  point  of  view, 
and  interpreted  with  scholastic  artificiality.  The  picture  of 
the  future  Messiah,  thus  gained,  was  a  picture  in  detail; 
it  embraced  ontological   and  official  predicates,  heroic  and 

1  It  is  on  this  account  that  I  have  availed  myself  of  every  opportunity  in  this 
discussion  to  point  out  how  unendurable  the  present  situation  is  to  the  Christian 
who  fails  to  understand  that  the  Object  on  which  his  faith  reposes,  to  which  it  is 
directed,  is  not  one  of  the  objects  in  the  region  which  historical  science  has  both  the 
right  and  the  duty  to  explore.  It  is  because  the  Object  of  faith  is  supposed  to  be  in 
the  region  of  historical  inquiry,  and  because  historical  science  converts  certainties 
into  problems,  that  ecclesiastical  authority  seeks  to  set  limits  to  scientific  pursuit, 
thus  fomenting  strife  and  injuring  religion.  One  cannot  too  earnestly  asseverate 
that  the  principle  of  Christianity  is  not  to  be  found  in  historical  data  which  science 
can  doubt,  but  in  the  filial  relationship  to  God,  with  which  science  can  have  nothing 
whatever  to  do.  The  task  of  the  present  is  to  conduct  the  religion  of  nonage,  bound 
to  external  authorities,  to  this  super-historical  religion  of  personality ;  and  the 
opportunity  of  the  free  discussion  of  all  questions  is  essential  to  the  fulfilment  of 
this  task. 


Jesus  397 

redemptive  deeds,  even  matters  biographical.  Since  all  this 
was  treated  as  genuine  prediction — although  most  of  it  was 
drawn  from  a  sophistical  exegetical  fantasy — it  was  of 
necessity  believed  to  have  been  fulfilled  in  the  Messiah; 
that  is,  in  Jesus.  Thus,  at  a  single  stroke,  a  second  unreal 
history  takes  its  place  by  the  side  of  Jesus'  real  history. 
Features  of  a  construed  Messiah  are  combined  with  the 
actual  features  of  the  person  of  the  real  Jesus.  To  reach 
Jesus,  we  must  strip  ofp  the  messianic  adornment ;  and  this 
is  no  easy  task. 

Critical  historians — e.  g.,  Gunkel,  Bousset,  Wernle, 
Pfleiderer — are  gradually  settling  down  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  messianic  dogmatics,  instead  of  growing  solely  from 
the  learning  of  the  scribes,  has  been  powerfully  influenced 
by  other  religions.  It  was  a  time  of  rapprochement,  and 
even  of  coalescence,  of  civilizations  and  cultures  from  every 
quarter  of  the  globe.  No  religion  could  remain  exempt 
from  the  universal  tendency.  It  is  inconceivable  that  Chris- 
tianity, arising  at  such  a  time,  should  exist  in  isolated  and 
incommunicable  grandeur.  Here  unneighborly  exclusive- 
ness  would  not  be  possible,  were  it  impossible  in  the  case  of 
Judaism.  As  many  peoples  were  becoming  one  people, 
many  civilizations  one  civilization,  so  the  many  religions 
were  becoming  one  religion;  that  is,  world-religion  was 
struggling  into  existence  along  with  other  world-experiences. 
A  religion  for  the  whole  world  must  be  made  by  the  whole 
world.  It  was,  as  Gunkel  says,  an  age  of  religious  syncre- 
tism. In  general,  it  was  a  step  of  progress  in  the  history  of 
religion,  an  advance  from  folk-religion  toward  individualism 
in  religion.  But  we  are  confronted  with  a  new  difficulty 
here:  In  every  age  of  religious  development  and  transfor- 
mation, of  exchange  and  expansion,  the  new  life  turns  out 
to  the  advantage  of  the  almost  forgotten  and  antiquated 
elements  in  the  old.      It  is  because  religion  is  ever  partly 


398   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

tradition  that  this  may  be  so.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era  it  was  not  otherwise.  By  virtue  of  the  spirit- 
iializing,  ethicizing,  and  individualizing  of  religions,  time- 
honored  rites  and  obsolete  features  of  cult  win  new  strength 
and  significance.  As  mysteries  and  as  sacraments,  they 
penetrate  into  the  religion  that  has  become  personal;  they 
force  their  fantastic  reflexes  upon  the  religious  view  of  the 
world,  and  they  dovetail  their  mythological  tales  into  the 
story  of  revelation.  In  the  three  centuries  before  the  Chris- 
tian era  Judaism  was  powerfully  affected  by  this  syncretism ; 
even  pharisaism  was  by  no  means  able  to  escape  it.  If  now 
we  must  accept  a  Jewish  syncretism  (or  gnosticism)  as  a 
fact — a  Christian  also — the  question  necessarily  arises,  even 
in  the  first  century,  as  to  whether  Jesus  himself,  or  certainly 
the  earliest  tradition  concerning  him,  was  influenced  by 
these  syncretistic  conditions.  If  the  phenomena  to  be 
examined  cannot  be  explained  from  legalistic  Judaism,  nor 
from  the  religious  peculiarity  of  personality,  the  attempt  to 
refer  them  to  alien  influences  seems  commendable.  But  it 
is  evident  that  such  a  question  is  extraordinarily  subtile  and 
difficult.  How  far  does  the  peculiarity  of  personality  reach? 
How  far  may  one  make  allowances  for  paradoxes  consistently 
with  the  organic  unity  of  consciousness,  and  in  view  of  the 
human  capacity  for  holding  contradictory  positions  at  one 
and  the  same  time?'  At  what  point  does  causal  explanation 
begin  to  offer  an  apology?  Do  the  universal  historical  cir- 
cumstances in  a  given  case  admit  of  influence  from  this  or 
that  "mythologomenon"  ?  Religio-historical  investigation 
suffers  all  too  frequently  from  artificially  isolating  its  prob- 
lem. But  even  deeper  wounds  are  inflicted  upon  it  by  that 
comparative  mythology  which  causally  connects  everything 

1  Professor  Wassermann  has  sought  to  show  that  theoretically  even  Jesus  shared 
in  the  verbal-inspiration  dogma  of  his  day,  but  that  practically  he  evinced  a  free  and 
critical  attitude  to  the  Old  Testament  which  was  in  contradiction  to  his  theory.  An 
illustration,  if  true. 


Jesus  399 

with  everything  else,  tears  down  fixed  hedges,  easily  bridges 
intervening  chasms,  and  spins  combinations  out  of  super- 
ficial similarities.  The  danger  here  is  from  the  pernicious 
inflaence  of  the  naturalistic  milieu  and  regressus,  previously 
discussed,  which  sees  nothing  epochal  and  novel  in  the  his- 
torical world,  as  well  as  nothing  outstanding  and  normative 
in  the  psychological.  Were  one  to  believe  a  certain  histori- 
cal school,  one  would  conclude  that  Israel  was  the  only 
sterile  race  ethico-religiously,  having  borrowed  all  from 
other  peoples,  and  that  Jesus  was  the  only  man  to  whom 
spontaneity  and  originality  had  been  denied.  So  much  was 
he  a  child  of  his  time  that  he  was  in  no  sense  the  architect 
of  his  own  character  and  fortune.  With  the  naturalistic 
wand  of  "religious  history"  this  school  deftly  sets  aside 
every  spontaneous  feature.  To  explain  everything  in  this 
manner  is  to  explain  it  away — rather,  in  the  last  analysis,  is 
to  explain  everything  by  nothing.  Nevertheless,  the  abuse 
of  this  combination  under  discussion  ought  not  to  prevent 
its  sober  critical  use.  Jesus  did  appear  in  an  age  of  reli- 
gious syncretism.  This  is  one  of  the  circumstances  which 
render  the  investigation  of  his  career  so  difficult.  We  must 
be  prepared  for  all  sorts  of  oddities  which  cannot  be 
explained  from  the  Old  Testament.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
explanation  of  many  problems  becomes  less  difficult,  since  in 
this  way  new  possibilities  of  explanation  are  opened  up. 

A  further  difficulty  comes  from  another  quarter.  The 
four  gospels,  which  are  our  main  sources  for  the  evangelical 
history,  are  neither  biographies  nor  strictly  memorabilia, 
but  books  for  purposes  of  evangelization  and  edification. 
They  use  their  material  much  as  a  popular  preacher  retells 
the  Parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  imaginatively  reconstruct- 
ing it,  supplying  all  sorts  of  embellishments,  and  adapting 
it  to  the  practical  ends  in  view,  unmindful  to  a  degree  of 
fidelity  to  the   literal  story.     To   awaken  faith,  to  supply 


400   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 


certainty  to  an  awakened  faith  —  this  is  the  end  which  the 
evangelists  had  in  view.  On  this  account  the  documentary 
witness  suffers.  In  another  direction  the  books  are  rendered 
all  the  more  valuable  thereby:  they  surely  exhibit,  not  the 
facts  concerning  Jesus,  but  the  faith  of  their  authors,  and 
the  source  and  strength  of  the  inner  life  of  their  authors. 
But  without  pursuing  the  point  further,  it  suffices  to  remind 
ourselves  yet  again  that  we  may  not  use  the  evangelical 
story  as  a  source  without  taking  into  account  the  ends  which 
the  authors  had  in  view. 

The  tradition  of  our  four  gospels  presents  a  new  diffi- 
culty. Their  original  text  has  not  remained  unchanged. 
And  the  most  important  changes  occurred  in  the  second 
century.  Up  to  that  time  the  text  was  in  a  state  of  flux, 
checked  since  by  the  canonical  formation. 

Motives  of  edification  and  evangelization  still  obtained, 
on  which  account  changes,  now  slight,  now  serious,  were 
made  in  the  interest  of  adaptation  and  effectiveness.  The 
endeavor  to  harmonize  the  books,  to  correct  the  text  of  the 
one  gospel  by  that  of  the  other,  is  easily  understood  in  their 
light.  While  it  is  worth  while  to  mention  this  difficulty, 
the  difficulty  is  not  great,  and  should  not  be  exaggerated. 

Jesus  spoke  the  Aramaic  language.  It  is  inevitable  that, 
by  translating  from  one  language  into  another,  something 
of  the  original  content  should  be  lost,  and  that  something 
of  an  alien  content  should  take  its  place.  The  idiom  and 
genius  of  one  language  cannot  be  exactly  translated  into 
another.  In  its  earliest  youth,  Christianity  was  translated 
from  the  Semitic  and  Jewish  mode  of  thought  and  feeling, 
and  wedded  to  the  Greek  spirit.  Only  in  the  garb  of  this 
spirit  do  we  possess  the  sayings  of  Jesus,  and  the  charac- 
terizations of  him.  Still,  the  original  idiom  is  discernible  in 
spite  of  the  transposition  into  a  new  language.  Neverthe- 
less, we  are  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  we  do  not  surely 


Jesus  401 

know  that  we  have  any  strictly  authentic  words  of  Jesns, 
since  we  have  his  words  only  in  the  form  of  a  foreign  lan- 
guage. 

Finally,  there  is  the  difficulty  incident  to  the  circum- 
stance that  the  apostle  Paul  follows  immediately  upon 
Jesus — a  hero  of  powerful  personality,  trained  in  scholastic 
theology,  mighty  in  word  and  pen,  inflexible  of  will  and 
lively  of  temperament,  indefatigable  in  work,  but  yet  as 
earnest  and  zealous  for  "doctrines"  as  for  souls.  Won  by 
Jesus  whom  he  had  not  known,  he  became  lifelong  servant 
and  missionary  of  the  Christ  throned  in  the  heavens,  and 
preached  his  apostolic  gospel  of  the  crucified  and  risen  Son 
of  God.  It  is  an  awe-inspiring  tribute  to  the  power  of  Paul 
that  to  this  day  the  gospels  are  read  by  most  people  in  the 
light  of  the  Pauline  theology.  In  the  entire  course  of  the 
centuries  the  understanding  of  the  gospels  has  been  inti- 
mately associated  with  this  theology.  The  latter  has  been 
a  system  of  control,  so  that  the  most  objective  and  impartial 
investigator  has  ever  feared  that  he  has  not  entirely  escaped 
understanding  the  gospels  according  to  Pauline  thoughts. 
Similar  in  so  many  ways,  as  theologians  Paul  and  Jesus  are 
"disparate."  And  Paul  is  not  to  be  divorced  from  his  the- 
ology, which  is  also  his  religion.  Determined  to  know  none 
save  Jesus  Christ,  his  Christ  was  in  many  ways  just  his. 
It  is  true  that  Paul  is  the  second  founder  of  Christianity. 
Indeed,  a  burning  question  of  the  hour  is  whether  the 
watchword  must  be:  "Jesus  and  Paul,"  or  "Jesus  or 
Paul."^  To  blast  and  tunnel  the  way  through  the  solidified 
Pauline  construction  to  the  real  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  a  task 
that  must  tax  to  the  utmost  all  the  energies  and  skill  of  his- 
torical and  theological  science.^ 

1  See  Wrede,  Paulus,  and  my  review  thereof  in  the  American  Journal  of  The- 
ology, July,  1905. 

2  But  it  must  be  done  in  the  interest  of  the  emancipation  and  autonomy  of  per- 
sonality, as  well  as  of  the  purification  and  potentiation  of  religion.     This  is  my 


402   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

A  catalogue  of  difficulties!  And  there  are  others  still — 
such  as  the  strange  method  of  that  time,  now  of  spiritualiz- 
ing sacred  texts,  now  of  taking  figurative  expressions  liter- 
ally. Disregard  of  such  matters  would  result  in  necessary 
misunderstandings. 

"If  thou  hast  run  with  the  footmen,  and  they  have 
wearied  thee,  then  how  canst  thou  contend  with  horses? 
and  though  in  a  land  of  peace  thou  art  secure,  yet  how  wilt 
thou  do  in  the  pride  of  Jordan?"^  These  difficulties  all 
vanish  at  a  single  stroke  for  those  who  believe  in  the  inspi- 

answer  to  Steerett's  effort,  based  on  an  obsolete  Hegelianism,  to  be  witty — which 
is  as  follows:  "The  historian,  especially  the  historian  who  believes  in  the  modern 
doctrine  of  development,  should  be  the  last  one  to  make  the  crab-cry  '  back.'  .... 
This  is  the  real  'yellow  peril'  in  our  modern  occidental  world.  It  is  the  spirit  of 
the  anti-Christ,  the  anti-logos,  the  anti-rational,  and  the  anti-progress  view  of  the 
world,  as  a  process  of  development  towards  full  realization  of  humanity  into  a 
Kingdom  or  Republic  of  God  on  earth. 

'•  Everyone  who  is  raising  the  crab-cry  is  flying  in  the  face  of  our  western  form 
of  civilization,  and  aiding  and  abetting  the  '  yellow  peril.' 

"  Even  the  cry  '  Back  to  Jesus '—  to  the  historical  Jesus,  who  lived  and  died  and 
was  buried  centuries  ago  — means  a  negation  of  the  hard-earned  forms  of  Christian 
culture  of  the  intervening  centuries.  And,  put  it  in  the  subjective  form  of  the  reli- 
gious feeling  that  was  in  the  heart  of  Jesus,  as  Sabatier  and  Harnack  do,  it  is  a 
further  reversion  to  the  oriental  type;  a  large  advance  toward  esoteric  Buddhism. 
Harnack's  lectures  are  professedly  ad  pojndum  academicum,  to  those  afflicted  with 
the  various  ailments  of  modern  culture.  He  does  not,  after  all,  take  modern  culture 
seriously.  Or,  he  does,  and  he  does  not.  But  in  devastating  historical  Christianity 
he  runs  into  such  utter  subjectivism  as  leads  logically,  as  it  always  historically 
has  led,  towards  the  oriental,  pessimistic  view  of  man  and  the  world.  Rational 
authority  there  is  none.  The  freedom  of  capricious  feeling  soon  tires,  and  non- 
existence becomes  a  welcome  goal.  The  freedom  of  oriental  thought  is  the  freedom 
of  non-existence  — all  forms  of  empirical,  historical  existence  being  bad. 

"  Literally,  back  to  anything  means,  and  finally  leads  back  to,  blank.  And  that 
is  where  the  cry,  back  to  the  historical  Jesus,  and  then,  back  to  a  personal  feeling 
in  the  heart  of  one  man  out  of  millions  of  men  — that  is,  back  to  Jesus  apart  from 
historical  Christianity— leads.  It  is  back  to  a  feeling  of  an  unmediated  relation  to 
God  — back  to  Neo-Platonic  ecstasy— a  swoon  of  man's  rational  nature,  and  then  an 
awakening  to  a  pessimistic  view  of  reality— to  despair  and  a  longing  to  cease  to  be, 
a  longing  for  Nirvana,  an  absorption  in  Brahma,  in  the  unconscious. 

"  So  back  to  Jesus  of  history—  back  to  a  Christ  without  historical  Christianity- 
back  to  a  filial  feeling  in  the  heart  of  Jesus  — all  this  backwardness  is  one  of  nega- 
tion that  ends  in  nothing  that  we  can  know— nothing  that  can  validate  itself  — a 
supersensuous  something  that  eludes  our  grasp,  and  soon  passes  away  into  an  illu- 
sory form  of  abnormal  consciousness."— TAe  Freedom  of  Authority,  pp.  85,  86. 

See  the  entire  brilliant  passage,  pp.  79  ff.,  in  which,  however,  Sterrett  fails  to 
see  that  the  value  of  the  effort  to  get  back  to  the  historical  Jesus  consists  partly  in 
its  abortiveness. 

iJer.  12:5. 


Jesus  403 

ration  of  the  gospels,  in  the  old  orthodox  sense  of  the  word. 
On  such  a  standpoint  one  needs  only  to  narrate  and — to 
harmonize.  As  in  the  storm  and  stress  of  life  we  often 
recall  the  halcyon  days  of  youth,  with  their  peace  and  rest, 
so  we  may  pathetically  turn  our  wistful  eyes  to  the  certainty 
and  comfort  which  once  reposed  upon  the  inspiration  dogma. 
But  we  have  been  driven  from  Eden  out  into  the  wilderness, 
and  must  henceforth  earn  the  bread  of  life  by  the  sweat 
of  our  brow.  For,  as  we  have  often  said,  the  assumption  of 
the  inspiration  of  the  text  has  been  shattered,  definitively 
and  irretrievably  shattered.  Out  in  the  wilderness,  we 
must  now  blaze  out  a  path  amid  the  thorns  by  means  of 
criticism. 

But  this  is  gain.  Criticism  is  better  than  dogmatism,  as 
manhood  is  better  than  childhood.  We  are  saved  by  doubt 
as  well  as  by  faith.  It  is  to  the  critical  movement  that  we 
owe  the  necessity  of  re-examining  the  traditional  determina- 
tion of  what  the  Christian  religion  essentially  is,  what  the 
gospel  of  Jesus  is,  what  religious  faith  is.  And  little  by 
little  we  are  coming  to  see  that  the  co?itent  of  religious  faith 
is  exposed  to  no  peril  from  historical  criticism.  What  must 
that  faith  be,  if  it  is  in  essence  a  reality  exempt  from  the 
vicissitudes  to  which  all  that  is  in  the  region  of  criticism  is 
subjected?  Criticism  has  pressed  this  question  upon  us; 
and  we  cannot  be  too  grateful  that  it  has  done  so.  Criticism 
has  compelled  us  to  withdraw  our  faith  from  false  objects, 
and  to  concentrate  it  upon  its  true  object.  And  the  object 
of  faith  is  not  the  Bible  with  which  historical  criticism  deals, 
but  rather  the  spirit  of  the  gospel,  known,  not  by  science, 
but  by  obedience;  nor  is  it  theology  and  dogma,  since  these 
are  expressions  or  creations  of  faith,  and  cannot  therefore  be 
the  object  of  faith.  The  object  to  which  faith  is  directed  is 
like  the  eternal  vital  force  of  spring — whoever  criticises 
this? — and  not  like  some  one  season's  output  of  leaves  and 


404   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

flowers  and  fruits,  upon  which  every  eye  is  critically  turned. 
The  great  eternal  values  and  forces — it  is  upon  these  that 
faith  lives;  and  these  forces  and  values  are  inaccessible  to 
criticism,  but  immediately  cognizable  on  the  part  of  the 
inner  life  of  him  who  is  of  a  humble  and  contrite  heart.  It 
is  not  within  the  sphere  of  the  power  of  science  to  say  the 
last  word  concerning  the  highest  and  deepest  question  of 
man.     Science  is  man's  servant,  not  his  lord.' 

It  is  hoped  that,  without  wandering  farther  from  our 
main  purpose  in  this  chapter,  these  observations  may  so 
commend  themselves  to  the  plain  Christian  as  to  save  him 
from  distress  as  he  may  peruse  the  following  pages.  He 
will  readily  see  that  these  remarks  apply  to  our  scientific 
effort  to  know  Jesus.  Did  Jesus  do  this  or  that,  go  here  or 
there,  say  this  or  that  ?  Where  was  he  born ;  when  did  he 
die;  how  long  did  he  live;  what  was  the  length  of  his  min- 
istry? As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  do  not  surely  know.  But 
nothing  concerning  him  of  which  critical  inquiry  can  make 
us  uncertain  is  an  object  of  religious  faith.  The  spirit  and 
ideals  and  forces  and  value  of  that  life — these  are  what  faith 
needs;  but  these  are  known  only  by  being  experienced,  and 
not  by  literary  and  historical  criticism.  It  is  not  meant  that 
criticism  brings  us  no  help.  Nothing  is  to  be  compared  with 
the  great  gift  of  religious  personalities  which  criticism  has 
rescued  from  the  debris  of  inspired  words  as  a  blessed 
substitute  for  the  latter.  What  is  the  dogmatic  Jesus — - 
critically  corroded  with  each  new  world- view — as  compared 

1  Since  writing  the  above,  I  have  been  pleased  to  come  upon  these  words  from 
Peofessor  Hermann  Schultz,  now  deceased :  "  Faith  in  the  historical  Christ  does 
not  at  all  involve  deciding  points  of  historical  science,  as,  for  instance,  the  problems 
with  which  the  investigations  of  the  life  of  Jesus  have  to  deal.  It  is  not  at  all  a 
question  of  anything  that  scientific  criticism  could  throw  doubt  upon,  of  anything 
merely  past  [italics  mine],  but  of  an  active  personality  that  has  stamped  itself  as 
living  on  the  spiritual  history  of  man,  and  whose  reality  as  it  is  in  itself  anyone  can 
test  by  its  effects,  as  immediately  as  he  can  test  the  reality  of  the  nature  that  sur- 
rounds him  and  the  relations  in  which  he  stands."  I  think  I  ought  to  add  that  this 
is  a  truth  which  I  have  been  heralding  for  years  in  my  own  country  —  as  the  voice  of 
one  crying  in  the  wilderness,  however! 


Jesus  405 

. — . 1 

with  the  human  Jesus;  what  is  Paul's  theology  as  compared 
with  Paul's  person;  what  verses  of  the  Psalms  as  compared 
with  psalmists;  what  messianic  predictions  as  compared  with 
the  prophets;  what  many  narratives  as  compared  with  their 
narrators;  what  opinions  as  compared  with  history!  Thus, 
too,  it  is  the  human  Jesus  as  expression  of  the  personal  life 
of  God  that  faith  craves  and  criticism  allows.  It  is  the 
personality  of  Jesus  for  which  faith  cares — cares,  however, 
because  in  Jesus  we  find  a  nowhere  else  existing  revelation 
of  the  divine  will,  and  a  nowhere  else  postulated  aim  of 
human  life.  The  Christian  is  one  who  knows  God  in  the 
man  Jesus,  one  for  whom  Jesus  is  the  personality  which 
determines  his  relation  to  God. 

One  more  remark  and  we  may  turn  to  the  main  task  of 
this  chapter.  We  accept  the  conclusion  of  criticism  that 
the  data  at  our  disposal  are  inadequate  for  the  writing  of  a 
biography  of  either  the  outer  or  the  inner  life  of  Jesus,  in 
the  strict  sense  of  that  word.  Even  the  foregoing  recapitu- 
lation of  difficulties  would  justify  our  doing  so.  In  addition, 
Bousset  says: 

Our  sources  admit  of  a  survey  of  only  a  small  part  of  the 

life  of  Jesus,  the  brief  period  of  his  public  ministry We 

do  not  know  anything  with  certainty  concerning  the  duration  of  the 

ministry  of  Jesus We  can  no  longer  sketch  an  historical 

picture  of  the  ministry  of  Jesus  in  Galilee  according  to  its  devel- 
opment and  its  temporal  course,  since  the  generally  timeless  expo- 
sition on  the  part  of  our  evangelists,  with  their  often  intentional 
objective  (sachlichen)  arrangement  of  the  words  and   deeds    of 

Jesus,  does  not  afford  us  the  means  for  such  a  sketch It  is 

very  little  that  we  know  of  Jesus  if  we  approach  the  source  to 
attempt  to  write  a  life  of  Jesus,  or,  as  it  is  now  called,  a  history  of 
Jesus  in  its  development  and  in  its  pragmatic  connection.  Almost 
everywhere  we  are  in  the  midst  of  uncertainties  and  guesses.  One 
will  do  well,  therefore,  to  give  up  all  efforts  at  a  "life"  or  a  "history" 
of  Jesus.' 

I  Jesus,  pp.  1-10. 


406    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

With  this  judgment  even  Holtzmann  agrees: 

For  a  biography  in  the  modern  sense  materials  are  wholly 
wanting.  All  that  the  older  sources  tell  us  is  concerned  with  the 
public  ministry  of  Jesus;  and  that  embraces,  it  must  be  admitted, 
only  a  small  portion  of  his  lif  e.^ 

So  critical  historians  in  general.  But  of  no  great  ancient 
hero  of  religious  history  can  a  strict  biography  be  written. 
In  this  respect  Jesus  is  not  alone.  The  externalities  of  his 
life,  the  delineations  of  the  details  of  his  ministry,  questions 
of  chronology — such  matters  to  which  great  and  scholarly 
works  have  been  devoted,  need  not  detain  us.  But  to  under- 
stand the  personality  of  Jesus,  to  apprehend  his  answer  to 
the  eternal  questions  of  the  human  heart,  to  hearken  to  his 
testimony  as  to  what  these  questions  are — it  is  this  for  which 
we  so  much  care.  Not  a  narration  of  conditions  and  facts, 
but  an  understanding  of  the  man  Jesus,  of  his  disposition 
and  thoughts,  of  his  purposes  and  feelings — this  is  our 
present  task.  Who  was  he,  and  what  did  he  want?  And, 
especially,  what  can  a  man  who  holds  the  modern  view  of  the 
world  think  of  Jesus,  do  with  him  ?  Time  was  when,  at  the 
mention  of  the  name  Jesus,  many  thought  of  church  doc- 
trine, of  Christology,  dogma,  the  old  creed,  which  lay  like  a 
veil  upon  the  personality  of  Jesus;  they  thought  of  the  veil, 
of  the  wrappings  woven  by  speculation,  of  the  deity;  of  the 
"conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  born  of  the  virgin  Mary;" 
of  resurrection,  descent  into  hell,  ascent  into  heaven;  of 
return  on  the  clouds ;  of  miracle  upon  miracle ;  of  the  whole 
church  belief  in  its  massive  formation  with  its  materialism 
and  its  magic!  Today  we  live  in  a  world  characterized  by 
nothing  so  much  as  by  the  absence  of  any  psychological  soil 
in  which  these  fantasies  can  find  nourishment.  If  these 
things  constitute  the  Christian  religion,  that  religion  is 
already  an  antiquated  affair,  a  relic  that  is  worthless  to  the 

1  Life  of  Jesus,  p.  78. 


Jesus  407 

cultivated  classes.  Christological  dogmas  really  signify  for 
many  children  of  our  time  a  sarcophagus  of  the  personality 
of  Jesus  and  of  his  religion,  and  are  responsible  for  the  sad 
ignorance  concerning  Jesus  and  the  essence  of  his  religion. 
One  casts  aside  the  gold  with  the  dross.  One  flees  from 
Christology  as  from  a  ghost,  without  ever  having  seen  Jesus. 

Therefore  we  must  do  what  we  can  ever  and  ever  again 
to  return  to  Jesus,  that  we  may  see  him  himself,  and  not 
through  the  spectacles  of  a  church  or  a  dogmatics.  So  only 
can  we  win  an  independent  judgment  concerning  his  impor- 
tance for  us.*  In  all  too  many  ways,  ecclesiastical  Chris- 
tology is  a  curtain  which  hides  the  sun  of  the  life  of  Jesus. 
Many  a  one  who  would  find  joy  in  the  sun  has  seen  only  the 
curtain,  and  carelessly  passed  by,  or  been  offended.  Through 
the  curtain  to  the  sun,  from  the  dogmatic  picture  of  the 
Christ  to  the  historical  picture  of  Jesus — so  much  as  in  ua 
lies ! 

But  this  historical  picture  of  Jesus,  as  sketched  by  the 
synoptists,  is  it  not  full  of  offense  to  a  man  who  holds  the- 
modern  view  of  the  world?  The  reader  may  answer  at  the 
close  of  this  chapter. 

For  the  rest,  we  shall  begin  at  the  periphery  of  interest^ 
and  pass  gradually  to  the  center  of  importance. 

1.  As  a  child  of  his  time,  Jesus  held  the  popular  view 
concerning  the  world:  the  kingdom  of  the  dead  below;  the 
terrestrial  world  above  it;  then,  above  the  latter,  heaven  with 
its  inhabitants.  Heaven  is  a  locality,  a  firmament,  where 
God  dwells,  surrounded  by  angels  and  spirits.  This  heavenly 
world  is  the  eternal  world;  all  that  belongs  to  it  is  eternal. 
For  him  the  earth,  not  so  very  extensive,  is  the  center  of  the 
universe.  So  Jesus  thought  and  spoke;  and  it  is  clear  that 
he  could  not  have  done  otherwise.     Even  if  he  knew  of  uni- 

1 "  The  teaching  of  Jesus  is  one  thing,  the  doctrine  concerning  Jesus  another. 
There  have  been  times  when  the  church  was  the  most  dangerous  foe  of  the  gospel, 
and  the  gospel  the  most  dangerous  foe  of  the  church." — Eoseggee. 


408    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

versal  gravitation,  the  infinitude  of  the  world,  of  natural 
laws,  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  him  to  have  clothed 
his  knowledge  in  words  which  his  hearers  could  have  under- 
stood. They  would  not  have  grasped  what  he  said.  But 
there  is  no  evidence  that  Jesus  had  such  knowledg-e.  Like 
other  men,  he  spoke  the  language  of  his  time,  and  expressed 
his  thoughts  in  the  pale  of  the  civilization  in  which  he 
moved. 

Again,  Jesus  spoke,  in  common  with  his  countrymen,  of 
the  demonic.  He  held  the  antique  psychology  according  to 
which  an  alien  spirit  could  enter  and  inhabit  a  human  body. 
He  attributed  certain  sins,  also  a  great  number  of  infirmi- 
ties, diseases,  cerebral  and  nervous  derangements,  to  the 
entrance  of  demons  into  the  bodies  of  unfortunates;  and  he 
healed  such  by  driving  out  the  demons.  Likewise,  he  shared 
with  his  times  in  the  idea  of  angels.  The  Old  Testament 
faith  in  angels  was  gradually  formed  from  many  sources,  not 
without  the  assistance  of  an  alien  influence ;  and  it  persisted 
in  the  New  Testament.  Jesus  believed  in  angels,  good  and 
bad ;  in  their  offices,  activities,  rank.  It  was  a  form  in  which 
his  faith  in  the  living  power  of  God  in  the  history  of  redemp- 
tion, in  the  divine  providence  specially  watchful  over  the 
fiiKpoi,  as  well  as  in  the  spiritual  character  and  comprehen- 
sive width  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  expressed  itself.  While 
he  believed  in  miracles,  it  appears,  at  all  events,  that  he 
knew  that  he  was  not  sent  to  do  miracles. 

What,  now,  shall  we  say  to  these  things  ?  First,  as  to  his 
view  of  the  world.  Is  the  natural  and  metaphysical  knowl- 
edge of  Jesus  authoritative  and  final?  There  was  a  time 
when  men  thought  so.  What  he  said  upon  such  subjects 
was  believed  to  be  among  the  ideas  which  men  were 
required  to  hold  as  permanently  true.  But  for  the  church 
to  occupy  such  a  standpoint  today  —  pardonable,  perhaps, 
prior  to  the  rise  of  modern  science — is  but  another  instance 


Jesus  409 

of  the  way  in  which  we  so  often  injure  a  good  cause  by 
extravagant  and  unwarranted  claims.  It  is  a  pity  that  it 
cannot  go  without  saying  in  every  ecclesiastical  community 
that  it  was  not  Jesus'  information  in  this  region  that  has 
kept  him  alive  and  powerful  in  our  advancing  humanity. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  said,  in  general,  that  if  Jesus  had  brought 
us  nothing  but  an  extension  of  our  knowledge,  a  few  scholars 
would  still  think  of  him  gratefully  perhaps  as  a  great  dis- 
coverer, but  most  men  would  use  the  knowledge  without 
thinking  of  him  at  all.  How  many  today  ask  who  started 
the  habit  of  eating  with  knives  and  forks,  wearing  clothes, 
living  in  houses?  As  we  use  the  knowledge,  who  thinks  of 
those  who  began  chemistry,  physics,  printing,  writing?  No, 
a  mere  extension  of  our  knowledge  on  the  part  of  Jesus 
would  not  keep  him  alive  among  us.  Besides,  a  knowledge 
itself  which  once  signified  a  marvelous  progress  comes  to  be 
something  commonplace  in  the  course  of  time;  for  "whether 
there  be  knowledge,  it  shall  pass  away,"  is  always  passing 
away.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  gratuitous  to  declare 
that  Jesus  was  in  error  on  this  subject,  for  he  never  taught 
anything  about  it.  Nothing  could  be  more  perverse  than 
the  effort  which  some  iconoclasts  make  to  reduce  the  impor- 
tance of  the  message  of  Jesus  to  such  traditional  ideas  as 
these  which  he  uncritically  held  in  common  with  his  people. 
Secondly,  as  to  his  belief  in  demons,  and  the  theory  of 
diseases  connected  therewith.  It  seems  true  that,  in  common 
with  the  medical  authorities  of  his  time  and  place,  he 
explained  certain  phenomena  of  disease  by  referring  them 
to  demonic  agencies;  also  that  certain  human  sins  were 
referred  by  him  to  such  superhuman  origin.  In  the  Old 
Testament  the  idea  of  Satan  and  of  demons  grew  up  from 
different  starting-points,  partly  under  alien  influence,  as  was 
the  case  with  the  idea  of  angels,  already  mentioned,  and 
came  to  be  an  essential  feature  of  the  then  picture  of  the 


410    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Eeligion 

world.  This  idea  passed  over  into  the  New  Testament 
period,  and,  as  said,  was  held  by  Jesus  himself. 

By  way  of  criticism,  it  may  be  said  that  the  Satan  idea 
can  serve  in  a  pictorial  way  to  set  forth  the  great  opposition 
between  the  kingdom  of  God  and  the  fearful  kingdom  of  sin 
with  its  attendant  evils,  to  establish  faith  in  the  overcoming 
of  all  the  forces  which  are  opposed  to  God,  and  to  spur  the 
Christian  to  earnest  warfare  and  indefatigable  watchfulness. 
Thus,  the  practical  religious  content  of  the  idea  of  Satan  and 
demons  can  be,  and  ought  to  be,  a  matter  of  experience  and 
certainty  to  the  Christian.  But  this  is  not  true  of  the  form 
of  the  idea  of  a  personal  Satan  and  his  demons.  If  we  are 
not  able  to  deny,  neither  are  we  to  affirm,  the  existence  of 
such  beings.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  changed  view  of 
the  world  as  presented  by  modern  science,  scruples  arise 
against  the  assumption  of  a  real  encroachment  of  Satan  and 
of  demons  into  our  lives.  Besides,  what  is  the  relation  of 
these  beings  to  the  infra-mundane  bearers  and  forces  of 
moral  evil?  What  is  their  relation  to  the  power  and  provi- 
dence of  God  ?  These  questions  have  never  been  cleared  up. 
The  most  that  can  be  said  is  that  the  Satan  idea  may  be  per- 
missibly used  only  as  a  pictorial  comprehensive  expression 
for  the  kingdom  of  sin  and  its  mysterious  sway,  provided 
that  those  who  so  use  it  do  not  on  that  account  surrender 
the  terrible  seriousness  of  Jesus'  conception  of  the  power 
of  sin. 

One  may  occupy  a  similar  attitude  today  with  reference 
to  the  angel  idea.  The  content  of  that  idea — viz.,  God's 
minute  providential  care,  especially  for  the  fiiKpoi  —  may  be 
a  fact  of  experience  not  exposed  to  moral  doubt ;  but  this  is 
not  so  as  to  the  form.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  world- 
view  exhibited  by  modern  science,  we  cannot  conscientiously 
assume  the  irruption  of  angelic  agencies  into  the  natural 
order  of  the  world — much  as  it  is  true  that  science  does  not 


Jesus  411 

require  the  denial  of  superhuman  spiritual  beings.  The 
angel  idea  may  still  serve  as  a  poetic  visualization  of  the 
providence  of  God,  provided  that  the  full  reality  of  the 
biblical  faith  in  providence  be  not  injured  or  abridged 
thereby. 

Now,  does  this  critical  and  skeptical  attitude  toward 
angels  and  demons,  discrediting  in  a  sense  Jesus'  ideas  on 
the  subject,  require  us  to  lower  our  estimate  of  the  personal- 
ity of  Jesus?  Let  the  remark  be  repeated  here  also  that 
Jesus  taught  nothing  upon  the  subject,  did  not  profess  to 
teach  anything;  hence  it  is  gratuitous  to  raise  the  question: 
Did  Jesus  err  in  this  region?  It  is  all  the  more  gratuitous 
when  we  remember  that,  sharing  in  the  beliefs  of  his  times 
upon  the  matter,  he  yet  attached  less  moral  and  religious 
value  to  such  ideas  than  did  his  countrymen.  Besides,  are 
modern  ideas,  often  naively  assumed  by  the  modern  man 
to  be  final  because  modern,  a  condition  of  pure  and  power- 
ful personality,  of  the  right  relations  of  personality  God- 
ward  and  man-ward?  "What  is  this  but  a  new  form  of  the 
identification  of  sound  character  with  sound  beliefs,  thus 
replacing  the  old  orthodoxy  by  a  new  orthodoxy,  with  all  the 
ills  entailed  by  such  a  procedure  ?  We  cannot  too  earnestly 
keep  from  laying  to  our  souls  the  flattering  unction  that  we 
moderns,  on  account  of  our  freer  and  broader  view  of  the 
world,  are  therefore  better  men.  It  becomes  us  rather  to  be 
impressed  with  how  unspeakably  difficult  it  is  for  us  to  con- 
quer for  ourselves  fixed  hearts  and  great  serious  wills  in  this 
new  world.  We  do  not  throw  our  inkstand  at  Satan,  as 
Luther  did,  though  it  might  not  be  such  a  bad  thing  for  us 
to  do;  yet  it  is  on  Luther's  broad  shoulders  that  modern 
civilization  rests.  Upon  this  general  subject  even  Renan 
expressed  himself  as  follows: 

The  principles  of  our  positive  science  are  offended  by  the 
dreams  which  formed  part  of  the  ideal  scheme  of  Jesus.     We  know 


412    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

the  history  of  the  earth;  cosraical  revolutions  of  the  kind  expected 
by  Jesus  are  only  the  results  of  geological  or  astronomical  causes, 
the  connection  of  which  with  spiritual  things  has  never  yet  been 
demonstrated.  But  in  order  to  be  just  to  great  masters,  they  must 
not  be  judged  by  their  share  of  popular  prejudices.  Columbus 
discovered  America,  though  he  started  from  very  erroneous  ideas; 
Newton  believed  his  foolish  explanation  of  the  Apocalypse  to  be  as 
true  as  his  theory  of  the  world.  Shall  we  place  an  ordinary  man 
of  oiu:  own  time  above  a  Francis  of  Assisi,  a  St.  Bernard,  a  Joan  of 
Arc,  or  a  Luther,  because  he  is  free  from  errors  which  they  pro- 
fessed? Is  it  desirable  that  we  should  measure  men  by  the  correct- 
ness of  their  ideas  of  physics,  and  by  the  more  or  less  exact 
knowledge  which  they  possess  of  the  real  condition  of  the  world? 
We  must  better  understand  the  position  of  Jesus  and  the  princi- 
ples underlying  his  power Let  us  not  impose  our  petty  and 

bourgeois  programmes  on  these  extraordinary  movements  that  are 

so  far  above  our  ordinary  conceptions The  idea  of  Jesus  was 

the  most  revolutionary  idea  ever  existent  in  a  human  mind;  it 
should  be  taken  in  its  totality,  and  not  with  those  timid  suppres- 
sions which  deprive  it  of  precisely  that  which  has  made  it  of  service 
in  the  regeneration  of  mankind.' 

A  similar  attitude  toward  Jesus'  belief  in  miracles,  is  a 
duty  of  fair-mindedness.  The  whole  ancient  world,  with  the 
exception  perhaps  of  the  few  thinkers  w^ho  were  the  bearers 
of  Greek  science  and  philosophy,  accepted  miracles.  On 
this  point,  also,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  Jesus' 
knowledge  was  in  any  way  superior  to  that  of  his  contem- 
poraries, who  had  not  the  least  idea  of  an  order  of  nature 
under  the  reign  of  law.  Besides,  not  a  few  of  the  stories 
of  marvelous  cures  effected  by  him  are  entirely  credible. 
Living,  thinking,  acting  in  the  invisible  world  of  God,  by 
faith  aglow  with  that  divine  world,  inspired  by  it,  excep- 
tional grandeur  must  have  enveloped  his  person  ;  unusual 
psychic  power  must  have  dwelt  in  him.''     At  a  time  when 

1  Life  of  Jesus,  chap.  7. 

2  While  Jesus'  personal  impression  was  the  main  means  of  healing,  the  records 
do  not  set  this  forth  as  the  only  means.  Exorcism,  threatening,  the  use  of  the 
hands,  the  use  of  spittle,  etc.,  are  mentioned.    The  religio-historical  study  of  these 


Jesus  413 

the  popular  belief  was  that  healing  was  to  be  effected  by 
religious  practices,  when  disease  was  in  general  regarded  as 
a  punishment  for  sin,  or  act  of  demon,  and  not  as  effect  of 
natural  causes,  healing  was  considered  a  moral  act.  Hence 
it  was  easy  to  believe  in  Jesus  as  the  great  healer. 

In  such  a  state  of  knowledge  the  presence  of  a  man  greater 
than  average  men,  treating  the  patient  with  gentleness,  and  giving 
him,  by  tangible  signs,  assurance  of  his  recovery,  is  frequently  a 
decisive  remedy.  Who  would  dare  to  assert  that  in  many  cases, 
certain  injuries  always  excepted,  the  touch  of  a  gentle  and  beauti- 
ful woman  is  not  worth  all  the  resources  of  pharmacy?  Cure  is 
effected  by  the  mere  pleasure  of  seeing  her.  She  gives  what  she 
can,  a  smile,  a  hope,  and  it  is  not  in  vain.' 

At  all  events,  however,  so  far  as  the  modern  man  is  con- 
cerned, he  can  no  longer  believe  in  miracles.  As  we  have 
seen,  such  a  faith  is  not  only  contradiction  to  his  thought, 
but  to  his  changed  faith  in  God.  He  has  learned  to  believe 
in  a  God  of  order,  in  a  God  whose  weaving  of  the  world  is 
so  fine  and  sure  that  it  requires  no  correction  from  him. 
But  the  modern  man  does  not  value  the  person  and  message 
of  Jesus  any  the  lower  because  Jesus  shared  the  thought  of 
his  time  on  this  subject,  especially  when  it  is  remembered 
that,  in  an  age  when  faith  in  miracle  was  as  common  as 
belief  in  natural  law  now  is,  and  confronted  no  scientific 
objections,  Jesus  did  not  ascribe  the  traditional  value  to 
miracle.  Did  he  not  exclaim,  in  tones  of  complaint  and 
accusation:  "Unless  ye  see  signs  and  wonders,  ye  will  not 
believe"  ?     Did  he  not   urge   that  the  moral  messages   of 

practices  is  of  much  importance.  For  example,  the  use  of  spittle  was  not  on 
account  of  its  chemical  properties,  but  it  belonged  to  the  general  art  of  exorcism. 
How  far  did  Jesus  share  in  the  current  method  of  exorcism,  and  what  was  distinc- 
tively his  own?  The  difference  is  partly  in  the  character  of  the  praying  of  Jesus  on 
such  occasions;  exorcists  often  used  the  name  of  God,  but  as  a  formula  of  adjura- 
tion, Jesus  in  real  petition.  His  end  was  service  of  others,  not  self-glorification. 
But  the  main  thing  was  the  personal  impression  of  Jesus;  and  if  we  ask  the  further 
question.  On  what  did  that  rest?  we  are  at  the  limits  of  our  historical  knowledge. 

1  Kenan  again.  See,  upon  this  point,  Haenack,  What  is  Christianity?  pp. 
58,  59. 


414   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Moses  and  the  prophets  were  of  far  more  worth  than  the 
rising  of  one  from  the  dead  (and  he  did  not  except  himself 
in  this  remark)?  Finally,  the  preceding  chapter  warrants 
the  conclusion  that 

Jesus  himself  did  not  assign  that  critical  importance  to  his  mirac- 
ulous deeds  which  even  the  evangelists,  Mark  and  the  others,  all 
attributed  to  them;  in  all  essential  points  he  must  have  thought 
of  them  quite  otherwise  than  his  evangelists.* 

Thus,  since  Jesus'  thought  here  was  a  part  of  his  heri- 
tage, and  as  such  is  a  valuable  witness  to  his  full  and  real 
humanity;  since  it  is  no  positive  element  in  his  instruction, 
like  the  forgiveness  of  sins ;  since  the  influence  of  his  strong 
but  sympathetic  personality  must  have  had  marvelous  heal- 
ing power  over  the  souls  of  those  who  trusted  him  in  that 
age  of  the  theory  and  belief  in  question ;  and  since,  for  all 
that,  he  never  saw  in  the  miracle  the  central  and  decisive 
thing  for  faith,  we  do  not  judge  with  historic  righteousness 
if  we  fail  to  honor  him  as  the  same  unitary  and  rich  person- 
ality, after  we  have  been  forced  to  hold  a  view  of  the  world 
different  from  his.  Much  as  it  is  true  that  in  these  points 
there  is  a  deep,  unbridgeable  gulf  between  Jesus  and  the 
modern  man,  that  in  these  points  reconciliation  is  impos- 
sible, still  nothing  would  be  more  foolish  than  to  locate  the 
essence  of  Christianity  and  the  importance  of  the  personality 
of  its  Founder  in  those  ideas  which  Jesus  shared  with  the 
children  of  his  time,  in  which  he,  like  everyone  else  was 
dependent  upon  the  intellectual  niveau  of  his  people,  of  the 
then  view  of  the  world  in  general.  It  is  only  after  that 
view  of  the  world  becomes  scientifically  untenable  that  it  is 
a  sin  against  the  holy  spirit  of  truth  to  seek  by  artificial  and 
arbitrary  means  to  conserve  it. 

2.  Passing  to  what  is  of  more  importance,  biblical 
scholarship  seems  to  have  settled  down    to  the  conclusion 

1  IIaenack. 


Jesus  415 

that  Jesus,  in  common  with  the  entire  primitive  Christian- 
ity, expected  the  immediate  advent  of  the  kingdom  of 
God.  His  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  was  not  that  of 
modern  philosophy — e.  g.,  the  Kantian  idea;  nor  of  modern 
theology,  especially  of  the  Ritschlian  type,  which  is  also 
Kantian.  According  to  the  latter,  the  kingdom  of  God  is 
the  gradually  growing  fulfilment  of  the  will  of  God,  a  slow 
permeation  of  all  human  relationships  with  the  leaven  of  the 
gospel.  But,  according  to  Jesus,  the  kingdom  of  God 
comes  from  heaven,  suddenly,  as  a  finished  entity — comes 
through  God's  power  alone,  and  without  man  doing  any- 
thing toward  its  coming.  The  Messiah  will  come,  the  dead 
be  raised,  judgment  take  place,  rewards  and  punishments  be 
bestowed,  the  world  end,  and  this  kingdom  be  set  up.  Man's 
part  is  to  prepare  for  this  crisis  by  repenting  of  his  sins. 
As  fairly  representative  of  this  interpretation  on  the  part  of 
special  investigators,  the  following  from  Bousset'  may  sufiice: 
Jesus  did  not  say  to  the  people: 

*'  The  moment  has  arrived  for  you  to  do  something  that  the  king- 
dom may  come,  for  you  to  compel  its  coming;"  that  was  the  cap- 
tivating messages  of  the  fanatical  patriots,  who  sought  to  effect 
insurrections  in  Galilee  at  that  time.  But  to  Jesus  it  was  abso- 
lutely certain  that  the  everyday  doings  and  the  earthly  labor  of 
man  could  not  bring  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  one  finger's 
breadth  nearer.  For  him  the  coming  of  the  kindom  was  some- 
thing entirely  miraculous  and  future.  The  living  almighty  God, 
and  he  alone,  will  set  up  his  miraculous  kingdom. 

Thus,  the  kingdom  of  God,  as  Jesus  preached  it,  was  not  an 
already  present  and  infra-mundane  reality,  but  was  entirely 
in  the  sphere  of  the  future,  and  entirely  in  the  sphere  of  the 
miraculous,  the  apocalyptic,  the  cataclysmic.  It  is  just 
God's  kingdom;  the  Almighty  God  himself  brings  it  when 
heaven  and  earth  pass  away,  when  the  dead  are  awakened, 
when  he  conquers  and  destroys  the  devil  and  his  angels. 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  37. 


416   The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Religion 

How  strange  all  this  sounds  to  the  man  of  today,  with  his 
categories  of  immanence  and  development  and  continuity 
and  unity!  Obliterate  it  from  our  heritage,  and  how  impos- 
sible it  would  be  for  the  modern  consciousness  to  originate  it 
as  a  system  and  form  of  that  consciousness!  But  our  query 
just  now  is  as  to  the  effect  it  should  all  have  upon  our  appre- 
ciation of  Jesus.  The  history  of  the  messianic  idea,  complex, 
difficult,  sometimes  bewildering  in  its  details  and  ramifica- 
tions, need  detain  us  but  for  a  moment.  The  idea  has  passed 
through  manifold  forms  and  stages,  from  the  human  and 
earthly  to  the  superhuman  and  heavenly.  As  the  Jew,  on 
account  of  adverse  fortunes,  bitter  and  blasting,  ceased  to 
expect  a  kingdom  from  man  and  man's  world  through  human 
instrumentalities,  but  began  to  dream  apocalyptic  dreams, 
born  out  of  misery  and  defenselessness,  of  a  kingdom  of 
God  from  heaven,  a  physical-hyperphysical  magnitude,  that 
should  be  miraculously  let  down  upon  earth,  so,  similarly, 
his  inflamed  imagination  pictured  a  King  in  whom  super- 
human attributes  were  integrated,  even  if  many  of  the  human 
were  not  alienated.  This  King,  or  Messiah,  was  a  heavenly 
man,  a  human-superhuman  entity:  Son  of  David,  Son  of 
God,  Son  of  man,  Son  of  the  Most  High.  We  commit  an 
unpardonable  anachronism  when  we  make  these  words  sig- 
nify liumanity  and  the  ideal  man  of  our  modern  thought. 
It  was  a  veritable  Messiah  whose  advent  Jesus  expected  in 
the  near  future — leaving  out  of  account  for  the  present  the 
question  whether  he  thought  that  he  himself  was  that  Mes- 
siah; and  it  is  with  this  fact  that  we  now  have  to  reckon. 
For,  as  many  suppose  that  they  must,  from  loyalty  to  Jesus, 
believe  in  angels  and  demons  and  miracles,  so  they  also  sup- 
pose that  they  must  share  his  Messianism,  that  they  must 
confess  all  that  Jesus  thought  on  the  subject  as  their  faith. 
But  it  is  a  fact  that  there  is  no  way  by  which  we  can  liuow 
that  there  was  this  objective  reality,  a  being  here  designated 


Jesus  417 

Messiah.  With  scientific  sobriety  we  abstain  from  denying 
the  existence  of  such  a  being;  we  cannot  refute  the  affirma- 
tion that  he  exists,  just  as  we  cannot  refute  the  affirmation 
that  Apollo  exists;  but  the  point  is  that  the  soul,  with  its 
passionate  demand  for  certainty  in  religious  matters,  cannot 
assure  itself  that  the  Messiah  did  or  does  exist.  It  is  not 
enough  that  we  cannot  deny,  we  must  be  able  to  affirm.  Not 
being  Jews  of  that  day,  with  Jewish  antecedents  and  environ- 
ment, we  would  not  construct  a  messianic  concept  in  our 
modern  world,  were  that  concept  to  be  obliterated  from  our 
minds.  That  is,  the  concept  is  antiquated ;  but  nothing  that 
grows  old  and  passes  away  amid  the  mutations  of  the  tem- 
poral belongs  to  the  essence  of  the  gospel.  Our  valuation  of 
Jesus,  therefore,  must  make  allowance  for  our  conscientious 
duty  to  decline  to  share  his  messianic  opinions.  Much  that 
was  in  his  world  of  thought  has  sunk  forever  in  the  stream 
of  time.  The  picture  which  Jesus  inherited  of  the  world 
and  its  processes  is  gone  forever.  We  cannot  entice  it  from 
the  Dead  Sea  of  the  past;  and  we  would  not  if  we  could. 
We  may  not  forget  the  new  products  of  thought  and  toil  in 
the  long  human  story  of  these  nineteen  hundred  years.  And 
if  faith  be  indissolubly  connected  with  that  old  picture  of 
the  world,  I  do  not  see  how  we  could  ever  attain  to  the  faith 
to  which  "all  things  are  possible."  But  we  have  at  length 
learned  that  to  have  faith  does  not  mean  to  hold  a  set  of 
opinions;  does  not  even  mean  to  think  what  Jesus  thought. 
We  are  not  required  to  confess  Jesus'  confession  in  order  to 
be  counted  within  the  pale  of  Christianity.  If  it  be  true 
that  every  man  is  a  unique  miracle  in  the  world,  that  the  like 
of  him  was  never  born  before  and  never  will  be  again,  then 
it  is  also  true  that  every  faith  is  unique  in  the  world ;  then  it 
is  true  for  psychological  reasons  that  one  cannot  confess  what 
another  man  has  believed,  were  this  other  man  even  Jesus 
himself.     The  other  man's  faith  would  be  no  warranty  for 


418    The  Finality  or  the  Christian  Keligion 

my  faith ;  the  truth  and  sincerity  of  his  confession  would  not 
prove  the  truth  and  sincerity  of  mine.  And  Jesus  requires 
no  blind  faith.  What  the  gospel  that  saves  requires  is  that 
I  confess,  not  Jesus'  confession,  but  my  own  —  with  Jesus- 
like pains,  courage,  sincerity,  and  in  the  use  of  all  the  means 
at  my  disposal.  Certainly,  as  regards  the  point  at  issue,  we 
know  the  world  did  not  come  to  an  end,  that  the  kingdom 
did  not  come,  that  the  existence  of  a  pre-existent  Messiah  is 
not  a  necessity  of  thought  or  of  faith;  and  therefore  Jesus 
would  himself  be  the  last  one  to  exact  of  us  an  adhesion  to 
opinions  which  are  impossible  to  us  precisely  because  we  have 
his  spirit.  But  shall  we  think  less  highly  of  him  because  he 
held  these  opinions?  In  answer  to  this  question,  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  point  out  that  Jesus  could  have  had  a  heart  as  holy 
as  God's  heart,  a  disposition  and  purpose  of  love  and  service 
toward  man  equal  to  God's  himself,  for  any  effect  that  his 
opinions  on  the  subjects  in  question  might  have  had.  What 
difference  does  it  make,  then,  as  to  what  he  thought  about 
such  matters? 

Still,  these  remarks  must  be  urged  with  a  certain  reserva- 
tion. 

It  is  not  correct  to  say  without  further  ado  that  Jesus  absolutely 
spiritualized  and  transcendentalized  (verjenseitigt)  the  future  hopes 
of  his  people.  When  he  told  the  Sadducees  that  they  neither  marry 
nor  are  given  in  marriage  in  that  blessed  future,  this  is  a  spiritualiza- 
tion;  but  in  all  probability  Jesus  said  nothing  entirely  new  in  the 
remark;  he  uttered  a  conviction  of  the  really  pious  people  of  his 
time.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  when  Jesus  preached  of  the  futtne, 
he  did  not  think  of  a  colorless,  purely  heavenly  beyond;  it  was  a 
future  on  this  earth,  in  this  land — at  all  events,  on  a  transfigured 
earth  —  of  which  he  thought.  We  must  not  be  led  astray  by  the 
expression  "kingdom  of  heaven,"  which  Matthew  so  often  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  Jesus.  Even  if  Jesus  used  the  expression,  we  know 
that  it  signifies  nothing  but  the  kingdom  of  God.  Jesus  did  not 
shrink  from  painting  the  joys  of  the  blessed  future  in  full  sensible 
colors.     He  says  that  the  himgry  shall  be  filled.     He  speaks  of 


Jesus  419 

eating  and  drinking,  and  of  sitting  down  with  the  patriarchs,  in  the 
kingdom  of  God;  he  is  pleased  to  depict  the  joys  of  that  future 
time  as  a  feast,  a  wedding  festival;  he  foretells  a  time  when  he  shall 
drink  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine  with  his  own.  It  shows  a  defective 
understanding  of  the  popular  naivete  and  childlikeness  of  the 
preaching  of  Jesus,  when  we  try  to  see  in  all  this  only  parable  and 
figurative  expression.  However  grievous  it  may  be  to  us,  we  have 
to  accustom  ourselves  to  see  how  fully  Jesus  was  a  child  of  his  time, 
a  true  son  of  his  people.' 

But  by  so  much  as  this  last  statement  is  true,  by  so  much 
again  must  we  acquit  Jesus  of  including  error  in  his  peculiar 
and  positive  message.  His  conception  of  the  messianic  king- 
dom and  of  the  mode  of  its  coming  was  in  part  temporal  and 
transitory;  but  his  practical  conviction  of  the  kind  of  man 
that  shall  be  a  member  of  it,  of  the  condition  of  membership 
therein,  is  of  permanent  and  essential  significance.  But  did 
Jesus  think  that,  not  the  latter,  but  the  former,  was  the  more 
important  matter?  Did  he  consider  that  as  central  which 
the  logic  of  history  has  shown  to  be  peripheral  ?  So  I  under- 
stand Loisy  to  contend.  If  this  be  true,  it  is  not  without 
precedent  among  the  world's  epoch-makers.  But  I  am  not 
able  to  see  that  the  facts  warrant  Loisy's  conclusion  that 
Jesus  did  not  know  the  kernel  of  his  own  gospel,  that  his 
vital  interest  was  in  the  heritage  from  his  people  rather  than 
in  the  new  moral  and  religious  disposition  to  which  he  would 
lead  his  human  brothers.     But  more  of  this  later. 

However,  invalidating  his  traditional  messianic  concept 
as  of  abiding  theoretical  value,  we  must  not  fail  to  do  justice 
to  its  practical  worth  for  Jesus  and  the  new  religious  com- 
munity. By  a  little  fertilizing  with  something  which  does 
not  organically  belong  to  the  soil,  that  soil  may  grow  and 
ripen  a  fruit  which  it  could  not  otherwise  do.  Let  us  state 
the  case  again.  Jesus  and  his  followers  hoped  for  a  super- 
natural kingdom    of  the  Messiah,  which   should   terminate 

iBoussET,  op.  cit.,  pp.  40,  41. 


420   The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

the  history  of  the  world.  They  looked  for  a  city  that  hath 
foundations,  whose  builder  and  maker  is  God.  Pilgrims  and 
strangers  on  the  earth,  they  desired  a  better  country,  that 
is,  a  heavenly.  Glorious  future !  Thus  a  great  expectation 
and  yearning  filled  their  souls.  Patience  and  fortitude, 
brotherly  love  and  hopefulness,  self-denial  and  unworldli- 
ness  grew  up  under  the  warm  sunshine  of  their  apocalyptic 
and  eschatological  dreams.  Once  originated,  these  eternal 
values  could  persist  after  the  dreams  in  connection  with 
which  alone  they  could  have  found  foothold  in  our  poor 
human  soil  had  faded  away.  The  virtues  and  tasks  empha- 
sized by  the  ethics  of  Jesus  were  essentially  such,  and  were 
such  from  historical  necessity,  as  were  conditioned  by  ex- 
pectancy and  enthusiasm.  And  the  great  archetypal  and 
symbolical  importance  of  this  ethic  reposes  on  these  consid- 
erations. All  human  life  which  has  any  worth  of  its  own 
is  led  on  in  expectation,  and  can  derive  instruction  from  the 
heroic  day  of  Jesus.  Nothing  great  is  ever  accomplished 
without  enthusiasm.  Suppose,  then,  the  object  to  which 
Jesus  directed  hope  was  illusory;  still  the  human  qualities 
of  the  subject — namely,  expectancy,  enthusiasm,  patience, 
kindness,  unworldliness — evoked  and  fertilized  by  that  great 
messianic  thought,  qualities  which  could  not  have  been 
grown  in  that  old  soil  without  that  thought,  are  of  eternal 
moment.  Once  grown,  they  have  unwithering,  self-propa- 
gating vitality,  and  the  thought  which  served  as  coefficient 
of  their  generation  may  pass  away.  To  surrender  the  object, 
the  New  Jerusalem  coming  down  from  God  out  of  heaven, 
but  to  keep  these  high  spiritual  qualities  of  the  subject,  and 
direct  them  to  the  commonplace  and  homely  tasks  of  life,  to 
vocation,  family,  fatherland,  and  humanity;  to  devote  our- 
selves to  the  immanent  and  present  with  the  all-absorbing 
devotion  that  the  Great  Dreamer  did  to  the  transcendent 
and  eschatological — to  do  this  is  to  be  inwardly  like  him 


Jesus  421 

by  being  outwardly  and  theoretically  unlike  him.  And  we 
judge  Jesus  with  righteous  judgment,  not  when  we  identify 
him  with  the  miraculous  supernaturalism  of  his  eschatology, 
but  when  we  adore  him  as  the  Author  of  this  new  disposi- 
tion with  these  high  human  qualities,  and  of  the  vast  infinite 
hopes  which  these  qualities  require  us  to  cherish  for  the 
future  of  the  human  race.  We  are  saved  by  hope.  Life  is 
no  funeral  procession,  but  a  victorious  march,  precisely 
because  of  the  lively  expectations,  illusory^  or  not,  which 
precipitate  all  the  energies  of  the  human  soul  into  activity. 
But  we  may  go  still  farther.  The  messianic  idea  occupied 
a  similar  place  in  the  world-view  of  Jesus  that  teleology  holds 
in  that  of  many  a  modern  thinker.  This  world  is  not  an 
endless  play  of  blind  caprice,  but  has  a  goal — an  end  and 
goal  that  is  in  God's  hands,  and  in  God's  plan.  "The  far- 
otf  divine  event  toward  which  the  whole  creation  moves"  is 
a  popular  phrase  among  modern  men.  It  is  not  Jesus' 
thought  of  its  imminence,  nor  ours  of  its  remoteness,  that  is 
the  constitutive  essence  in  either  case ;  but  it  is  rather  the 
idea  of  a  meaning  in  things,  and  that  that  meaning  is  good. 
We  may  not  share  Jesus'  expectation  that  a  great  unknown 
world  shall  emigrate  into  this  world;  but  our  end  is  near, 
and  our  entrance  into  the  mystery  of  the  beyond,  where  as 
Jesus'  disciples  we  may  hope  to  be  nearer  to  God.  Beneath 
the  fantastic  and  dramatic  preaching  of  Jesus  on  the  king- 
dom is  embedded  the  idea  of  this  hope  of  the  nearness  of 
God.  The  kingdom  of  God  coming  to  us  as  in  the  thought 
of  Jesus,  our  going  hence  to  the  kingdom  of  God,  are  alike 
forms  of  the  eternal  truth  of  the  presence  and  blessing  of 
God  as  the  soul's  abiding  portion.  But  if  the  kernel  of  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom  is  the  nearness  of  God,  we  may  still 
pray,  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  although  not  in  the  literal 
immediate  sense  of  his  word:   "Thy  kingdom  come  !" 

1  See  F.  W.  Robertson's  great  sermon,  "  The  Illusoriness  of  Life." 


422   The  Finality  or  the  Christian  Religion 

3.  Did  Jesus  hold  that  he  was  himself  the  Messiah  for 
whom  his  people  hoped  ?  No  point  in  the  life  of  Jesus  has 
been  the  subject  of  more  controversy  in  recent  years  than 
this.  "Did  Jesus  hold  that  he  was  more  than  a  man,"  asks 
Weinel,  "and  how  high  up  in  the  scale  of  being  did  he  rank 
himself?"  "I  believe,"  Weinel  continues,  "it  is  our  scien- 
tific duty  to  confess  that  we  can  no  longer  answer  this  ques- 
tion with  certainty."'  And  Bousset,  who  thinks  that  Jesus 
claimed  to  be  the  Messiah,  admits  that,  when  we  approach 
the  mystery  of  the  self -consciousness  of  Jesus,  we  no  longer 
tread  upon  firm  ground.  Our  uncertainty  is  due  to  two 
causes.  One  is  our  natural  expectation  that  a  man  like  Jesus 
would  have  observed  modest  reticence  concerning  the  mys- 
tery of  his  person,  and  concerning  his  supreme  faith  in  him- 
self as  well.  Would  not  the  messianic  title  be  an  offense  to 
the  simple  and  humble  spirit  of  him  who  would  not  be  called 
'•good,"  and  who  taught  his  disciples  to  call  no  man  "rabbi" 
even  ?  But  the  main  cause  is  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing 
between  what  was  the  faith  and  conviction  of  the  primitive 
community,  and  what  was  Jesus'  own  opinion.  We  must 
ever  bear  in  mind  that  from  the  first  the  portrait  of  Jesus 
was  sketched  from  the  standpoint  of  faith,  and  not  from 
that  of  critical  historical  fidelity.  At  the  time  of  the  literary 
activity  upon  which  we  are  dependent  for  our  information, 
the  historical  man  Jesus  was  of  little  moment  as  compared 
with  the  heavenly  being  of  a  Paul  or  a  John.  In  the  earliest 
beginnings  of  Christianity  the  messianic  glory  of  Jesus  was 
sought  in  the  future,  not  in  the  present.  But  gradually  the 
human,  historical  life  of  Jesus  was  supplied  with  deeper  and 
deeper  messianic  color,  until  his  earthly  life  was  nothing 
from  beginning  to  end  but  a  constant  irradiation  of  divine 
glory.  The  difficulty  is  to  distinguish  in  the  picture  that 
which  is  original  and  that  which  is  born  of  the  faith  and 
enthusiasm  of  the  community. 

1  Jesus  im  neunzehnten  Jahrhundcrt,  p.  282. 


Jesus  423 

As  an  additional  consideration,  there  is  the  difficulty  inci- 
dent to  the  manifold  modifications  which  the  messianic  idea 
underwent  in  the  course  of  its  history,  and  to  the  question 
whether  there  was  a  modification  to  which  Jesus  could  turn 
as  an  appropriate  self-designation.  Or,  was  the  designation 
inappropriate,  misleading,  and  dangerous,  while  he  was 
nevertheless  under  both  psychological  and  historical  neces- 
sity to  assume  it? 

A  thorough  examination  of  the  Jewish  messianic  ideal, 
its  genesis,  development,  and  function,  is  a  task  by  itself. 
For  our  purpose  it  suffices  to  say  that  the  idea  of  Messiah  is, 
in  all  its  forms,  a  creation  of  the  Jewish  national  mind,  and 
embodies  the  popular  yearning  after  a  glorious  renewal  of 
the  kingdom.  Israel  a  world-power,  as  under  King  David — 
this  was  the  goal  of  their  desires.  The  basis  of  this  hope  in 
a  golden  future  was  that  a  hero  of  God  would  overthrow  the 
ruling  powers  in  a  decisive  conflict.  This  hero  was  Israel's 
future  king;  that  is,  the  Messiah.  A  new  Jerusalem  would 
arise.  The  Jews  of  the  diaspora  would  return.  Then  would 
come  the  final  drama:  death,  resurrection,  judgment.  How 
this  picture,  from  being  earthly  and  historical,  came  to  be^ 
supernatural  and  apocalyptic,  was  briefly  indicated  in  a. 
former  paragraph.  As  the  most  interesting  factor,  it  remains; 
to  remark  that  the  Messiah  could  appear  only  in  case  the 
people  were  pure.  Here  is  the  movement  with  which  the 
Baptist  could  associate  himself.  It  is  this  moral  precipitate 
alone  which  could  make  the  idea  acceptable  to  Jesus.  Or„ 
must  he  accept  it,  even  if  its  moral  content  was  not  adequate' 
to  keep  it  from  being,  on  account  of  other  considerations, 
repulsive  to  him? 

But  did  Jesus  assume  the  title  ?  It  is  a  question  of  fact. 
It  is  Jesus  who  is  the  Messiah.  This  is  the  fixed  point,  the 
basic  article  of  faith  of  primitive  Christianity.  But  did  this 
faith  of  the  primitive  community  have  its  roots  in  the  faith 


424   The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

of  Jesus  himself?  It  is  beyond  question  that,  according  to 
the  view  and  exposition  of  our  evangelists,  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah  from  the  very  beginning  of  his  ministry,  and  was 
accredited  as  such  by  his  own  words  and  deeds,  and  by  both 
superhuman  and  human  witness.  The  infancy  stories,  the 
temptation  stories,  the  account  of  the  beginning  of  his  min- 
istry as  fulfilment  of  the  law  and  of  promise — these  are  all 
messianic.  So  is  the  narrative  of  his  baptism,  where  Jesus 
was  made  Son  of  God  by  reception  of  the  Spirit  from  heaven. 
Yet  all  these  messianic  designations  of  Jesus  have  been 
critically  contested,  and  it  would  seem,  on  good  grounds. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  life,  in  the  region  of  Caesarea  Philippi, 
Jesus  asked  his  disciples  who  the  people  thought  he  was; 
and  they  said:  "John  the  Baptist,  or  Elijah,  or  one  of  the 
prophets."  But  why  is  it  that  the  people  did  not  know  that 
Jesus  was  the  Messiah,  in  spite  of  so  many  miracles  which 
he  had  already  done,  in  spite  of  his  messianic  self -witness, 
and  in  spite  of  the  voice  of  demons,  to  which  a  higher 
knowledge  was  universally  ascribed?  On  this  occasion, 
according  to  the  record,  the  disciples  expressed  their  faith 
in  the  messianity  of  Jesus  for  the  first  time.  This  seems 
incredible,  from  all  that  had  gone  before.  If  all  the  ante- 
cedent messianic  words  and  deeds  are  historical,  then  the 
scene  on  the  way  to  Csesarea  Philippi  could  not  be  possible; 
if  the  latter  is  historical,  then  the  exposition  of  the  evan- 
gelists who  introduce  Jesus  as  Messiah  from  the  beginning 
cannot  rest  on  historical  memorabilia,  but  only  on  dogmatico- 
apologetic  presuppositions  and  postulates.  We  cannot  escape 
this  alternative.  Moreover,  why  did  Jesus  forbid  his  dis- 
ciples to  speak  of  his  messianity  ?  If  he  himself  put  forward 
messianic  claims,  would  he  not  wish  that  this  faith  of  his 
disciples  should  be  made  known  to  all  the  people  and  be 
shared  by  as  many  as  posssible?  It  is  difficult  to  form  an 
idea  of  a  Jewish  Messiah  who  would  be  such  only  in  secret. 


Jesus  i25 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  critics  like  Martineau,  Wellhausen, 
Lagarde,  Havet,  and  Wrede  think  that  Jesus  never  desired 
to  be  held  as  the  Messiah.  To  be  sure,  the  reply  is  made 
that  Jesus  forbade  the  announcement  of  his  messianity  from 
pedagogic  wisdom  and  caution,  because  he  feared  the  people 
might  hold  him  to  be  a  political  Messiah,  while  he  was  a 
spiritual  Messiah.  But  is  this  reply  entirely  satisfactory? 
Would  not  the  simple  way  to  avoid  this  misunderstanding  on 
the  part  of  the  people  have  been  for  Jesus  to  say  plainly 
that  he  was  the  Messiah,  not,  however,  in  the  old  Jewish 
sense,  but  in  this  or  that  new  sense?  Is  it  not  most  sur- 
prising that  Jesus,  who  made  free  to  reinterpret  the  law, 
never  gave  any  such  new  interpretation  to  the  traditional 
messianic  concept?  And  yet  the  prayer  of  Zebedee's  sons 
for  places  of  honor,  and  other  incidents,  show  that  even  the 
disciples,  to  say  nothing  of  the  people,  needed  instruction 
on  the  subject.  Surely,  pedagogic  wisdom  and  caution 
would  have  prompted  Jesus  to  an  unequivocal  word  which 
would  have  saved  his  disciples  and  friends  from  false 
expectations.  Thus,  while  the  position  that  Jesus  claimed 
to  be  the  Messiah  is  self-evident  to  our  evangelists,  it  is  not 
secure  on  that  account.  Some  students  urge,  indeed,  that 
the  whole  process  of  the  trial  of  Jesus  is  best  understood 
on  the  supposition  that  he  was  attacked  as  false  Messiah, 
and  put  to  death  on  account  of  his  claim  to  be  "king  of  the 
Jews."  But  the  historicity  of  his  messianic  confession 
before  the  sanhedrists  is  not  any  too  well  authenticated, 
since  no  disciple  was  an  eyewitness,  and  since  the  apocalyp- 
tic prediction,  Mark  14:02,  doubtless  issued  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  primitive  community.  And  as  for  his 
death,  the  critique  which  his  life  and  words  courageously 
and  constantly  executed  upon  the  morals  and  religion  of  the 
leaders  of  the  people  would  account  for  that,  without  the 
supposition  of  messianic  pretensions  on  his  part.      It  would 


426    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 


seem  to  be  a  tragic  law  of  the  world-order  itself  that  the 
bearer  of  the  higher  ideal  should  fall  a  victim  to  the  vulgar 
reality  round  about  him ;  and  Jesus  of  all  men  could  not  be 
an  exception  to  the  workings  of  this  law.  No  one  has  pene- 
trated more  profoundly  into  the  historical  inevitability  of 
the  death  of  Jesus  than  has  Professor  Julius  Kaftan : 

Jesus  was  confronted  by  the  party  of  the  Pharisees  who  ruled 
the  peoijle  of  Israel.  It  was  the  Pharisees  who  nailed  Jesus  to  the 
cross.  The  Sadducees  were  only  instruments  in  their  hands.  The 
respectable  people  of  the  world  stood  too  far  from  him  for  them  to 
come  into  any  conflict  with  him.  Again,  the  publicans  and  sinners 
received  him  with  joy.  His  real  foes  in  Israel  were  the  Pharisees, 
the  devout,  or  a  part  of  the  devout,  who  waited  for  the  salvation  of 
Israel.  Thus  it  ever  was.  The  prophets  of  God  were  persecuted 
and  killed  in  the  name  of  God.  In  the  name  of  God,  also,  was  the 
only  begotten  Sou  of  the  Father  nailed  to  the  cross.  For  it  was 
precisely  in  this  relation  to  the  Pharisees  that  the  condition  was 
fulfilled  under  which  a  mortal  conflict  could  arise  :  the  principiant 
opposition  within  the  same  basic  view. 

Jesus  preached  the  coming  of  the  kingdom.  The  Pharisees 
expected  its  coming.  Jesus,  with  his  disciples,  actively  strove 
after  righteousness.  The  Pharisees,  on  their  part,  were  concerned 
to  plant  and  nurture  righteousness,  as  they  understood  it,  among 
the  people.  They,  Jesus  and  the  Pharisees,  met  on  the  basis  of 
the  same  fundamental  view.  But  the  principiant  opposition  was 
inconceivably  great.  Jesus  preached  and  pracficed  the  love  of 
God,  which  sought  to  create  a  new  man  unto  eternal  life,  in  con- 
nection with  the  death  of  the  old  man.  The  Pharisees  counted  on 
a  fulfilment  of  the  divine  promises,  corresponding  to  the  natural 
heart;  on  the  satisfaction,  not  of  base  sensual  lusts  indeed,  but  of 
ambition,  of  power,  of  national  pride;  in  short,  of  the  most  char- 
acterful impulses  of  the  morally  cultivated  natural  man.  There,  a 
supramundane  kingdom  which  is  developed  primarily  as  a  king- 
dom of  moral  righteousness  in  the  world ;  here,  a  supernatmal 
world-kingdom  in  this  world.  There,  a  righteousness  of  disposi- 
tion, which  evinces  and  expresses  itself  in  self-denial  and  love; 
here,  a  righteousness  in  the  observance  of  religious  precepts,  with 
which  one  can  pose  before  men.     Of  necessity  did  the  conflict  arise, 


Jesus  427 

since  both  parties  claimed  the  people  for  themselves,  and  claimed 
also  that  they  had  God's  truth. 

And  a  reconciliation,  a  compromise,  was  impossible.  Jesus 
could  not  be  derelict  to  his  calling  which  the  Father  had  given 
him,  the  fulfilment  of  which  was  his  meat  and  his  drink  on  earth. 
And  as  little  could  the  Pharisees  change.  Publicans  and  sinners 
are  converted  when  God's  tnith  touches  their  heart ;  but  they  do 
not  change  whose  worldly  minds  have  been  indissolubly  united 
with  faith  in  God ;  they  do  not  change  who  are  convinced  of  carry- 
ing on  God's  cause  by  their  worldly  acts  and  inclinations.  For 
these  conversion  is  too  late.  Therefore  the  conflict  was  unavoid- 
able. Here,  if  anywhere,  we  may  speak  of  an  historical  necessity. 
But  in  the  world  it  is  the  children  of  the  world  who  reap  the  first 
victory.  They  employ  means  against  which  the  Holy  One  of  God 
is  powerless,  just  because  he  is  the  Holy  One  of  God.  Thus  the 
conflict  ended  in  blood  inevitably.^ 

These  sober  and  convincing  words  point  to  a  sufficient 
cause  for  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus,  apart  from  the  hypothesis 
of  his  messianic  self-designation,  though  the  latter  may,  for 
all  that,  be  maintained  on  other  grounds.  It  is  well  to  put 
the  matter  in  this  form,  since  critics  like  Bousset  declare 
that  criticism  overshoots  the  mark  when  it  seeks  to  shake 
such  firm  points  of  the  tradition  as  Pilate's  inscription  on 
the  cross,  "King  of  the  Jews,"  the  messianic  confession  of 
Jesus  before  the  Sanhedrim,  of  which  mention  has  just  been 
made ;  and  the  triumphal  entry  as  Messiah  into  Jerusalem. 
And  Deissmann  does  not  hesitate  to  assert  that  the  present 
controversies  over  our  subject  scarcely  signify  a  progress  in 
knowledge,  and  that  they  are  possible  only  because  violence 
is  done  to  the  sources. 

What,  then,  may  be  said  in  support  of  the  opposite  posi- 
tion, that  Jesus  did  claim  to  be  the  Messiah?  While 
from  the  foregoing:  it  would  seem  that  no  decision  can  be 
surely  reached  on  the  basis  of  an  appeal  to  single  passages 
of   the  tradition,  yet  there  is    one   narrative  which    lends 

1  Dogmatik,  4th  ed.,  pp.  570-72. 


428   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

powerful  support  to  the  contention  that  Messiah  is  a  desig- 
nation used  by  Jesus  of  himself.  It  is  the  account  of  the 
scene  at  Csesarea  Philippi,  to  which  we  wish  to  revert  again. 
Pfleiderer  remarks  that  precisely  the  circumstance  of  the 
striking  contradiction  of  the  passage  to  the  evangelist's  pre- 
suppositions is  the  strongest  proof  of  the  historicity  of  the 
Petrine  confession  at  Ceesarea  Philippi,  and  that  the  assign- 
ment of  a  definite  locality  also  tells  in  the  same  direction. 
According  to  the  narrative,  Jesus,  toward  the  end  of  his 
Galilean  ministry,  propounded  the  question  to  his  disciples 
as  to  who  he  was,  and  Peter  answered  that  he  was  the  Christ. 
At  the  same  time,  Jesus  strictly  commanded  them  to  keep 
silent  touching  the  mystery.  It  seems  highly  probable  that 
originally  the  meaning  of  this  narrative  was  that  Jesus  here 
spoke  with  his  disciples  for  the  first  time  concerning  the 
mystery  of  his  person,  and  that  the  disciples  in  turn  first 
made  the  confession  of  his  messianity.  And  the  fact  that  it 
is  one  of  the  few  synoptic  narratives  which  are  locally,  and 
even  in  a  sense  temporally,  fixed,  constitutes  no  little  right 
to  our  honoring  this  tradition  as  historical,  notwithstanding 
Wrede's  brilliant  opposition  thereto.'  Bousset  suggests 
that  the  preservation  o'f  the  indifferent  outer  circumstances 
of  place  and  time  shows  how  worthful  the  narrative  was  to 
the  community  from  the  very  beginning.  Of  more  value  is 
the  point,  which  he  makes  in  common  with  Pfleiderer,  that 
the  narrative  relates  something  that  could  not  have  been 
invented  by  the  later  community — something  absolutely 
paradoxical  to  them.  For  the  faith  of  that  community  the 
messianity  of  Jesus  was  the  most  certain,  the  most  self- 
evident,  the  most  valuable  thing  in  connection  with  him. 
And  yet  it  was  only  toward  the  end  of  his  life  that  Jesus 
spoke  of  it!  Where  the  community  came  to  form  the  tradi- 
tion from  its  own  point  of  view,  as  a  matter  of  course  it  had 

'  See  his  Das  Messiasgeheimnis  in  den  Evangelien.    But  see  also  J.  Weiss'  refu- 
tation, Das  alteste  Evangelium, 


Jesus  429 

Jesus  to  testify  from  the  very  beginning  to  his  messianity. 
According  to  the  fourth  gospel,  John  the  Baptist  and  the 
first  disciples  knew  from  the  very  beginning  that  Jesus  was 
the  Messiah.  Occasional  passages  in  the  first  three  gospels 
are  to  the  same  effect.  According  to  Mark/  messianic  desig- 
nations of  Jesus  occurred  at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  in 
contradiction  to  the  scene  at  Csesarea  Philippi.  To  all  this 
we  have  already  referred.  The  point  now  is  that  this  char- 
acter of  the  scene  at  Csesarea  Philippi,  so  paradoxical  to  the 
faith  of  the  community,  guarantees  its  historicity.  It  is 
true  that,  according  to  the  narrative,  Jesus  did  not  say  in  so 
many  words,  "I  am  the  Messiah;"  but,  if  we  would  save 
ourselves  from  quibbling,  certainly  from  hypercriticism,  we 
must  admit  that  what  he  said  amounted  to  this.  If  the  dis- 
ciples came  to  him  with  the  question  that  was  in  the  air  at 
that  time,  "Art  thou  the  Messiah  ? "  and  if  he  denied  that 
he  was,  it  would  seem  that  the  denial  should  have  been  made 
explicitly  and  unconditionally;  in  which  case  the  primitive 
community  would  never  have  been  able  to  attribute  the 
messianic  name  to  him  as  they  did. 

This  brings  us  to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  As  we  have 
already  stated,  it  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  the  early  Chris- 
tian community  believed  Jesus  to  be  the  Messiah.  How  did 
this  belief  originate?  Supernaturalists  are  of  the  opinion 
that  it  was  due  to  the  miraculous  appearances  on  Easter 
Day.  Those  visions  were  objective,  they  tell  us.  But  if 
psychology  is  to  be  trusted,  an  objective  vision,  instead  of 
being  a  scientific  concept,  is  rather  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
Here,  as  usual,  supernaturalists  fail  to  distinguish  between 
what  is  cause  and  what  is  effect  in  religion.  They  refer 
those  experiences  of  the  disciples  to  a  purely  magical  order. 
And  they  posit  something  absolutely  new  in  the  souls  of  the 
disciples  without  any  psychological  mediation.     Historical 

12:10;  2:19f.;  2:28. 


430    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

science  must  repudiate  the  entire  supernaturalist  position  on 
this  subject.  While  we  do  not  surely  know  how  the  dis- 
ciples, their  hopes  blasted  by  the  crucifixion,  came  to  attach 
their  familiar  messianic  predicates  to  Jesus,  an  hypothesis 
of  great  reasonableness  is  that  they  did  so  on  account  of 
the  revival  or  persistence  of  the  effect  which  Jesus'  own 
messianic  confession  during  his  lifetime  made  upon  them. 
"Blessed  art  thou,  Simon,  son  of  Jonas,  for  flesh  and  blood 
have  not  revealed  it  to  thee  (that  I  am  the  Messiah),  but  my 
Father  in  heaven!"  In  these  words  Jesus  told  his  disciples, 
in  the  most  unmistakable  terms,  that  he  was  the  Messiah. 
"The  excitement  that  must  have  been  created  among:  the 
disciples  by  this  confirmation  of  Simon's  daring  words  can 
scarcely  be  described.'"  On  the  basis  of  this  confession  of 
Jesus,  which  they  could  not  long  forget,  it  was  easily  pos- 
sible, psychologically,  for  the  disciples  to  return,  after  a 
temporary  collapse  of  their  hopes,  to  a  conviction  formerly 
cherished  on  the  basis  of  his  own  solemn  declaration.  Rea- 
soning backward  from  the  belief  of  the  first  community  to 
the  grounds  and  source  of  that  belief,  it  appears  that  the 
balance  of  probability  is  on  the  side  of  the  position  that 
Jesus  considered  himself  to  be  the  Messiah  in  some  form, 
and  that  he  had  communicated  his  conviction  to  his  dis- 
ciples.^ "The  balance  of  probability" — but  no  such  cer- 
tainty as  one  could  be  expected  to  hang  his  destiny  upon. 
Weinel's  conception  of  our  scientific  duty  must  be  respected. 
But  assuming — for  the  sake  of  the  argument,  if  for  no 
other  reason — this  conclusion  to  be  most  in  accord  with  the 
facts,  we  may  now  approach  the  question  of  main  impor- 
tance to  us:  What  shall  be  the  modern  man's  appreciation 
of  Jesus  in  the  face  of  this  claim  to  be  the  Messiah  ? 

1  OSCAK  HOLTZMANN,  op.  cit.,  p.  325. 

2So  also  Weenle:  "The  belief  of  the  disciples  in  their  Messiah  must  be  older 
than  Jesus'  death,  for  it  could  not  entirely  arise  after  that  death,  which  was  such  a 
grievous  disappointment  to  so  many  expectations.  If  it  is  older  than  Jesus'  death,  it 
is  incredible  that  Jesus  did  not  share  it,  and  yet  suffered  it  to  be  held."   Op.  cit.,  p.  44. 


Jesus  431 

a)  As  already  said,  we  have  no  way  of  ascertaining 
whether  there  was  a  personal  being  corresponding  to  the 
messianic  idea.  It  is  true  that  the  Messiah  of  the  Jews 
came  to  be  evaluated  ever  higher,  until  he  came  to  be  the 
Messiah  of  humanity  for  Paul,  and  the  Logos  of  the  entire 
cosmos  for  John.  It  is  further  true  that  the  confession, 
Jesus  is  the  Messiah,  became  the  religious  creed  of  the 
peoples  of  the  Roman  world-empire,  and  has  remained  the 
religious  creed  of  all  the  races  sharing  directly  or  indirectly 
in  the  intellectual  heritage  of  that  empire,  in  the  civilization 
of  the  Graeco-Roman  world.  A  heavenly  being  pre-existing 
in  divine  glory  dwelt  on  this  earth  for  a  brief  period,  died, 
rose  again,  and  returned  to  his  former,  though  more  glori- 
ous, mode  of  existence  in  heaven,  whence  he  shall  come 
again  to  judge  the  living  and  the  dead — this  idea — or, 
rather,  this  drama — has  probably  been  the  most  potent  fac- 
tor in  the  history  of  religion.  Certainly,  the  incarnation, 
death,  and  resurrection  of  this  being  from  heaven  were  made 
the  fundament  of  religion  in  occidental  civilization.  It  is 
the  kernel  of  Paulinism,  and  puts  Paul  on  the  side  of  ecclesi- 
astical orthodoxy.  Nevertheless,  in  obedience  to  the  require- 
ments of  the  changed  view  of  the  world  and  of  life,  which 
we  discussed  at  length  in  a  previous  chapter,  the  time  has 
arrived  when  both  the  religious  and  the  scientific  interest 
compel  us  to  urge  that  the  messianism  of  Jesus  is  not  a 
necessary  article  of  faith. 

If  one  will  designate  the  character  of  this  view,  one  may  not 
avoid  the  expression  "  myth."  We  do  not  use  it  to  offend  anyone. 
It  has  nothing  offensive  to  us.  A  doctrine  which  has  given  to  mil- 
lions of  hearts  the  best  that  they  have;  a  doctrine  without  which  a 
Luther,  a  Paul  Gerhard,  and  a  John  Sebastian  Bach  could  not 
have  been;  a  doctrine  which  still  today  comforts  thousands  and 
thousands  of  good  and  earnest  contemporaries,  and  fills  them  with 
peace;  which  has  lent  the  most  impressive  expression  to  the  ethical 
thoughts  of  divine  love  and  grace  as  of  human  sinfulness — such  a 


432   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

doctrine  we  treat  with  reverence.  But  the  thought  that  a  divine 
being  left  heaven,  entered  into  a  human  shell,  and  then  died,  but 
to  ascend  to  heaven  again,  is  not  changed  thereby  in  its  nature. 
Whoever  cannot  put  his  faith  in  it,  for  him  it  is  in  essence  neces- 
sarily a  mythological  idea.' 

This  is  well  said.  To  be  sure,  Arthur  Bonas  may  be  right 
in  his  conviction  that  religion  cannot  get  on  without  myth, 
and  that  what  we  need  is  a  new  myth  in  connection  with  our 
new  view  of  the  world,  to  take  the  place  of  the  former  myth 
which  was  adapted  only  to  the  old  world-view  in  harmony 
with  which  it  was  developed.  And  such  men  as  Kalthoff 
are  to  be  reckoned  with,  as  they  seek  to  show  that  the  reli- 
gious dynamic  for  all  the  past  Christian  centuries  has- 
resided,  not  in  the  message  and  merit  of  the  historical  man 
Jesus,  but  in  the  mythological  being  from  heaven  of  the 
Pauline  reflection.  Hitherto  Christianity  has  been  messi- 
anity.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  this  must  be  so  for  the 
future.  Paul  must  decrease  and  Jesus  increase — indeed,  it 
would  seem  that  the  age  of  Jesus  has  come.  Whatever  may 
be  true  with  reference  to  these  matters,  one  thing  is  certain ; 
it  is  of  absolute  importance  to  the  best  life  of  the  human 
spirit  in  all  the  future  that  the  values  which  constitute  the 
kernel  of  the  messianic  mythology  be  embodied  in  the  new 
view  of  the  world  as  the  very  essence  of  it  also.  To  think 
through  this  point  and  set  it  forth  should  be  the  burden  of 
modern  theology.  The  sin  of  ecclesiastical  orthodoxy  today 
is  its  determination  to  treat  the  idea  of  divine  grace  and  love 
as  indissolubly  united  with  the  messianic  idea,  and  to  demand 
that  the  modern  man  shall  consequently  accept  both  or  reject 
both.  But  if  the  new  world-view  is  to  continue  in  its  essen- 
tial features,  the  well-being  of  the  bearers  of  culture  is 
dependent  upon  the  surrender  of  the  idea  that  divine  grace 
and  love — nay,  the  divine  judgment  as  well — are  a  foreign 

1  Weede,  Paulus,  pp.  103,  104. 


Jesus  483 

importation  from  "heaven"  through  messianic  mediation 
into  our  world,  and  upon  the  acceptance  of  the  idea  that 
these  divine  vahies  are  original  and  organic  in  the  natural 
and  historical  order — nay,  that  they  are  indigenous  to  the 
soil  and  substance  of  reality  itself.  That  this  is  true  is  the 
contention  of  this  book,  and  the  grounds  of  its  defense  of  the 
finality  of  the  Christian  religion.  With  such  a  conception 
we  can  endure  the  loss  of  the  old  myth,  dear  and  hallowed 
as  it  is  to  us  by  the  most  precious  memories  and  hopes  with 
which  our  lives  have  been  blessed,  inasmuch  as  once  yet 
again  the  glory  of  the  latter  covenant  excels  the  glory  of  the 
former. 

But  to  return.  If  we  are  not  able  to  affirm  that  there 
was  a  pre-existent  personal  being  who  dwelt  in  heaven  but 
came  down  to  earth,  neither  are  we  able  to  assume  that 
Jesus  had  access  to  better  knowledge  upon  the  subject  than 
man  has.  Such  an  assumption  would  jeopardize  the  integ- 
rity of  his  human  nature.  If  this  is  to  imply  that  Jesus  was 
in  error,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  we  can  escape  the  implica- 
tion. But  since  he  disclaimed  omniscience,  he  thereby 
tacitly  admitted  the  possibility  of  erring  in  opinion.  On 
the  hypothesis  we  are  at  present  employing,  it  is  a  fact  that 
he  was  mistaken  as  to  the  point  of  time  of  the  advent  of  the 
Messiah.  The  fantastic  idea  that  a  dead  person  should 
return  upon  the  clouds  of  heaven  chills  the  modern  intellect 
quite  as  much  as  belief  in  a  pre-existent  personal  Messiah. 
If  Jesus  so  shared  in  the  antique  psychology  and  cosmology 
as  to  believe  the  former,  it  seems  probable  that  he  could  quite 
as  easily  believe  the  latter.  Nevertheless,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  "error"  is  the  right  word  to  use  with  reference  to 
those  ideas,  transitory  and  imperfect  though  they  be,  in 
which  one  participates  by  virtue  of  his  being  a  child  of  his 
time.  We  cannot  at  once  demand  that  Jesus  be  a  real  and 
full  man,  and  depreciate  him  for  sharing  in  the  limitations 


434    The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Keligion 

of  the  human.  Besides,  it  would  be  difficult  to  mention  an 
idea,  however  indispensably  it  may  have  once  functioned, 
that  does  not  become  antiquated  in  the  course  of  time; 
and  yet  we  would  hesitate  to  class  all  that  is  antiquated  as 
erroneous.  Moreover,  the  unreality  of  the  pre-existent  mes- 
sianic individual,  once  granted,  was  of  no  serious  importance. 
Ontologically,  Santa  Claus  is  unreal,  but  morally,  so  to 
speak,  he  is  the  most  real  being  in  the  world,  since  he  is  the 
embodiment  and  personification  of  the  most  real  and  most 
worthy  sentiments  and  services  of  the  human  heart.  Simi- 
larly, the  messianic  idea  stood  for  realities  which  supplied 
the  dynamic  for  a  people's  whole  career. 

b)  But  that  idea  was  not  entirely  worthy;  could  Jesus 
therefore  worthily  accept  it?  We  know  very  little  when  we 
know  that  Jesus  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah  of  his  people, 
unless  we  also  know  which  form  of  the  messianic  idea  he 
acknowledged,  how  it  appeared  in  his  consciousness,  what 
motive  he  had  for  assuming  it,  and  what  end  it  served.  We 
have  said  that  the  idea  had  a  long  development  and  under- 
went a  thorough  metamorphosis.  New  forms  arose;  old 
ones  persisted;  old  and  new  modified  each  other.  There 
was  the  national  Messiah — fantastic  in  form,  political, 
worldly,  sarkic  in  content,  and  fanaticizing  in  effect.  And 
there  was  the  apocalyptic  theological  Messiah,  in  some  re- 
spects moral  and  spiritual — so  much  so  that  even  John  the 
Baptist  was  supposed  by  some  to  be  the  Messiah.  These 
were  the  two  extremes  of  the  idea;  and  between  them  there 
were  all  sorts  of  combinations  and  modifications,  so  that 
Harnack  desperately  declares  that 

in  Christ's  time  there  was  a  siu'ging  chaos  of  disparate  feeling,  in 
regard  to  this  one  matter.  At  uo  other  time,  perhaps,  in  the  his- 
tory of  religion,  and  in  no  other  people,  were  the  most  extreme 
antitheses  so  closely  associated  under  the  binding  influence  of 
religion.' 

1  Op.  cit,  pp.  135, 136. 


Jesus  435 

And  Jesus  was  the  Messiah!  Which  Messiah?  At  the 
one  extreme,  a  Davidic  king,  the  ideal  of  a  theocratic  king; 
at  the  other,  a  heavenly,  spiritual  being,  existing  with  God 
before  the  world  was,  but  coming  at  the  end  of  the  ages  on 
the  clouds  of  heaven  and  surrounded  by  angels — such  were 
the  poles  of  the  messianic  idea.  How  much  of  this  was  an 
integral  part  of  the  self -consciousness  of  Jesus?  It  is  psy- 
chologically inevitable  that  the  messianic  idea  should  modify 
Jesus'  consciousness,  as  well  as  that  it  should  modify  the 
idea.  Thus,  psychology  lends  countenance  to  the  painful 
judgment  of  Wernle: 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  obvious  that  that  which  is  inadequate  in 
the  idea  of  the  Messiah  here  wins  its  first  and  last  victory  over 
Jesus.  In  his  prophecy  of  the  second  coming  Jesus  yields  its  due 
to  the  faith  of  the  age.  Here  for  a  moment  the  wild  fancies  of 
later  Judaism,  the  magic  world  of  the  ancient  popular  belief, 
intrude  in  the  midst  of  the  grand  simplicity  of  Jesus'  consciousness 
of  his  call.^ 

But  this  judgment  should  not  give  us  much  pain,  after  all, 
since  it  amounts  to  saying,  let  it  be  repeated,  that  Jesus 
could  not  be  a  child  of  man  at  all  without  being  a  child  of 
Tiis  time.  Such  participation  in  the  transitory,  the  temporal, 
the  illusory,  does  not  disqualify  him  to  be  the  home  of  the 
permanent,  the  eternal,  the  real. 

But  which  Messiah  was  Jesus?  Conditioned  by  Wernle's 
remark,  we  answer:  None  that  his  people  knew  of;  none 
that  they  wanted;  none  that  they  could  understand.  Or, 
rather,  if  he  did  take  their  messianic  idea,  as  Wernle  further 
says,  he  destroyed  it  in  taking  it.  In  a  word — illustrative  of 
the  influence  of  Jesus  upon  all  that  he  touched — he  effected 
the  humanization  of  the  Messianic  ideal,  in  antithesis  to 
its  theocratization.  Herein  is  the  greatness  of  Jesus.  In 
particular,  no  trace  can  be  found  of  a  stiff ei-ing  Messiah  in 

lOp.  cit.,  pp.  51,  52. 


436    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

all  Judaism,  prior  to  Jesus.  It  is  a  sufferer  whom  God 
anointed  and  sent  to  be  a  savior  —  this  is  Jesus'  personal, 
bold  faith.  And  he  did  not  arrive  at  this  conviction  through 
instruction  or  speculation,  but  through  suffering,  in  the 
broad  sense  of  that  word.  We  but  drop  down  to  the  Judaic 
level  when  we  so  often  say  that  he  knew  that  he  was  the 
Messiah  in  spite  of  his  suffering.  Who  was  Jesus?  The 
son  of  a  carpenter — good  enough  father  for  a  savior.  Jesus 
was  a  simple  country  child,  without  any  higher  education  or 
knowledge.  In  his  native  town  no  one  paid  any  particular 
attention  to  him.  Up  to  his  thirtieth  year  he  was  an  artisan. 
He  was  not  a  star  that  dwelt  apart,  but  was  kindly  with  his 
kind. 

"Toiling,  rejoicing,  sorrowing,  onward  through  life  he  goes, 
Each  morning  sees  some  task  begun,  each  evening  sees  its  close. 
Something   attempted,   something    done  has    earned  a  night's 
repose." 

During  his  last  years  he  was  a  homeless,  wandering  prophet 
and  servant  of  the  common  people.  Poor  in  worldly  pos- 
sessions, at  length  an  outcast  from  his  own  people,  repudiated 
by  his  countrymen  as  an  enemy  to  their  religious  laws  and 
customs,  he  was  at  last  nailed  to  the  cross,  of  which  he  had 
had  forebodings.  Never  did  he  reach  out  after  sovereignty 
over  the  kingdoms  of  the  world ;  never  did  he  claim  for  him- 
self God's  miraculous  power;  never  did  he  flee  from  the  pri- 
vations of  life  to  avoid  suffering — all  this  is  mirrored  in  his 
temptations. 

He  grew  up  as  a  tender  plant,  and  as  a  root  out  of  a  dry 
ground:  he  hath  no  form  nor  comeliness;  and  when  we  see  him, 
there  is  no  beauty  that  we  should  desire  him.  He  was  despised, 
and  rejected  of  men;  a  man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief: 
and  as  one  from  whom  men  hide  their  face  he  was  despised,  and 
we  esteemed  him  not.  Surely  he  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried 
our  sorrows;  yet  we  did  esteem  him  stricken,  smitten  of  God,  and 
afflicted.     But  he  was  wounded   for  oin:  transgressions,  he  was 


Jesus  437 

bruised  for  our  iniquities :  the  chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon 
him;  and  with  his  stripes  we  are  healed.' 

This  is  what  the  prophet  thought  it  meant  to  be  sent  and 
anointed  of  God.  That  Jesus  occupied  the  same  high  pro- 
phetic level  is  evident  from  his  reproduction  of  the  same 
conviction : 

Ye  know  that  they  which  are  accounted  to  rule  over  the  gen- 
tiles lord  it  over  them;  and  their  great  ones  exercise  authority  over 
them.  But  it  is  not  so  among  you:  but  whosoever  would  become 
great  among  you,  shall  be  your  minister:  and  whosoever  would  be 
first  among  you,  shall  be  servant  of  all.  For  verily  the  Son  of 
Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister  and  to  give 
his  life  as  a  ransom  for  many.^ 

This  brief  answer  to  the  question  raised  above  is  not 
meant  to  be  adequate,  but  to  indicate  that,  as  a  man  of  sor- 
rows, as  a  suffering  servant  of  his  brethren,  gaining  bitter 
experience  in  his  dealings  with  his  people,  did  Jesus  arrive 
at  his  new  idea  of  a  suffering  Messiah,  at  the  thought  of 
the  necessity  of  suffering,  and  even  of  death.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  ideas  grow  out  of  the  life.  That  Jesus  should 
have  arrived  at  the  conception  of  such  a  human  Messiah,  as 
against  the  heavenly  Messiah  of  his  people's  hopes,  belongs 
to  his  chief  glory,  and  has  its  roots  in  his  own  humanity.^ 

Usa.  53:2-6. 

2  Mark  10:42-45.  The  closing  figure  of  speech  has  no  ecclesiastical -dogmatic 
signification. 

3  How  did  Jesus  come  to  know  that  he  was  the  Messiah'?  Our  task  does  not 
carry  us  into  this  problem.  But  a  suggestive  quotation  or  two  from  works  upon  the 
subject  may  be  given : 

"It  is,  then,  a  complete  mistake  to  suppose  that  Jesus'  experience  at  his  bap- 
tism loses  in  value  and  significance  when  it  is  no  longer  understood  as  an  objective 
occurrence  in  the  outside  world,  but  is  regarded  as  an  incident  of  his  inner  spiritual 
experience.  The  really  important  thing,  from  the  point  of  view  both  of  the  history 
of  the  world  and  of  the  history  of  religion,  is,  after  all,  the  awakening  of  Jesus' 

belief  in  himself  as  the  Messiah This  belief  was  first  implanted  deep  in  his 

consciousness  on  the  day  he  was  baptized  by  John  in  the  Jordan." — O.  Holtzmann, 
op.  cit.,  p.  137. 

"  It  is  only  honest  to  confess  that  this  origin  [of  the  messianic  consciousness]  is 
a  mystery  for  us :  we  know  nothing  about  it.  All  we  can  say  is  how  this  conscious- 
ness did  not  arise  in  Jesus.  It  was  not  through  slowly  matured  reflections  of  an 
intellectual  nature;  such  are  never  the  basis  of  certainty Nor,  again,  was  it 


438    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

In  these  remarks  we  reach  the  threshold,  of  a  problem 
whose  solution  brings  us  into  the  heart  of  the  matter.  Since 
Jesus  was  not  the  warlike,  kingly  liberator  of  his  people's 
expectation;  since  he  treated  the  picture  that  loomed  up 
before  him  of  an  imperial  kingdom  on  earth  as  a  Satanic 
temptation;  since,  on  the  contrary,  he  exhibited  the  pro- 
phetic features  of  a  great  merciful  savior  of  the  poor,  the 
sick,  the  shunned,  the  incarcerated,  the  lost* — especially 
the  features  of  a  redeemer  of  sinners;  in  a  word,  since  he 
was  a  suffering  Messiah,  w^iy  did  he  appropriate  the  mes- 
sianic title  at  all?  Why  should  he  seek  to  clothe  his  self- 
consciousness  in  the  narrow  national  Jewish  idea?  There 
was  no  harmony  between  Jesus  and  the  messianic  idea — did 
he  then  have  a  messianic  consciousness?  As  we  have  seen, 
the  weight  of  evidence  seems  to  support  the  position  that  he 
did.  And  the  solution  of  the  riddle  is  the  pressing  problem 
of  biblical  scholarship.  Harnack  is  of  the  opinion  that 
Jesus,  when  he  could  no  longer  avoid  the  conviction  that 

owing  to  the  influence  of  his  surroundings;  the  voices  of  demons  and  of  the  world 
might  make  a  man  of  genius  vacillate;  they  could  never  impart  a  divine  certainty  to 
him.  The  fact,  too,  that  Jesus  appears  from  the  very  first  with  unswerving  con- 
stancy and  immovable  certainty  as  oue  sent  by  God  causes  us  to  abandon  bnth 
explanations." — Weexle,  op.  cit.,  p.  45.  So,  too,  Harnack.  Wernle  does  not  think, 
as  Holtzmann  does,  that  the  consciousness  of  his  call  dates  from  his  baptism,  since 
it  does  not  depend  upon  voices  and  visions,  but  upon  compulsion. 

"  How  the  certainty  arose  in  the  soul  of  Jesus,  which  drove  him  into  publicity 
and  led  him  to  martyrdom,  will  remain  forever  hidden  from  us.  In  chasteness  and 
wisdom  history  has  left  the  birth  hour  of  the  self-consciousness  of  Jesus  a  mystery. 
We  may  know  the  means  whereby  the  prophetic  energy  of  his  inner  life  was  ulti- 
mately released;  in  John  the  Baptist  the  carpenter  from  Galilee  saw  the  hero  of 
God  who  called  it  forth.  And  it  was  when  John  baptized  him  that  Jesus  for  the  first 
time  experienced  the  full  certainty  of  his  mission  and  his  anointing;  in  prayer  he 
heard  an  old  familiar  word  from  the  Psalms  as  a  voice  from  heaven  :  '  Thou  art  my 
beloved  Son  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased.'  The  messianic  certainty  of  Jesus  —  it  is 
his  self-consciousness  —  we  may  not  conceive  to  be  a  dogmatic,  excogitated  convic- 
tion, which  was  the  result  of  reflection  or  of  exegetical  study.  It  did  not  arise  at  a 
definite  moment  of  his  life  as  a  firm,  quiet  possession.  Rather,  from  all  that  we 
may  learn  from  the  sources,  it  was  a  prophetic  certainty,  a  divine  gift,  which  as 
such  had  to  riijen.  It  is  a  certainty  which  dawned,  then  faded  again;  which  shone 
forth  in  great  revelatory  moments  with  heavenly  clearness,  but  then  shrank  trem- 
blingly back  again  in  humility  and  simplicity."— Deissmann  in  Beitrage  zur  Wetter- 
entivicklung  der  christlichen  Religion,  p.  106. 

iLuke  4:16-22, 


Jesus  439 

he  was  the  promised  Messiah,  must  at  first  have  felt  this 
knowledge  to  be  a  terrible  burden — adding,  however,  that 
"in  saying  this  we  have  gone  too  far.'"  Wernle  does  not 
think  that  the  statement  does  go  too  far,  "All  the  great 
redemptive  activity  of  Jesus  has  no  place  in  the  Jewish  con- 
ception of  Messiah."^  If,  then,  that  which  is  great  in  Jesus 
is  not  a  consequence  of  the  messianic  idea,  is  not  expressed 
by  that  idea,  but  is  an  original  addition  of  his  own,  why  did 
he  avail  himself  of  the  title  ?  The  Messiah  is  Israel's 
future  king — that  and  nothing  else.  But  Jesus  did  not 
feel  that  he  was  that.  If  he  used  the  concept,  he  had  to 
replace  its  content  by  another.  Why  did  he,  contrary  to 
his  own  counsel,  put  new  wine  into  an  old  bottle?  What 
he  said  would  happen  in  such  cases  did  happen :  the  bottle 
broke  and  the  wine  was  spilled,  "He  accepted  the  idea 
under  compulsion,  because  it  was  the  outer  form  for  that 
which  was  final  and  highest.  He  labored  with  it,  broke  it 
up,  recast  it."  This  explanation  of  Wernle's  seems  most 
reasonable.  How  could  he  who  turned  the  pompous  king 
of  a  material  utopia  into  the  tragic  figure  of  the  cross  do 
otherwise  than  regenerate  the  messianic  concept?  In  this 
connection  we  may  understand  why  Jesus  postponed  even 
till  the  close  of  his  life  any  public  claim  to  be  the  Messiah. 
All  the  while  Jesus  was  confronting  an  insurmountable 
inner  difficulty.  The  inadequacy  of  the  messianic  title  to 
express  the  reality  that  he  knew  he  was;  the  disparateness^ 
even,  between  that  title  and  his  innermost  consciousness, 
was  a  source  of  struggle  and  pain  to  him.  Whether  Mes- 
siah of  Zealot  or  of  rabbi,  whether  an  earthly  Davidic  Mes- 
siah or  a  super-earthly,  heavenly  being,  the  Messiah  was  yet 
a  national  king  for  national  ends,  demolishing  Rome  and 
setting  up  a  world-power  at  Jerusalem.  And  Jesus,  a  man 
of  the  people,  a  layman,  a  physician,  a  shepherd,  a  servant; 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  140.  2  Op.  clt.,  p.  48. 


440   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

a  lover  and  forgiver  of  his  enemies;  a  friend  weeping  with 
those  that  weep,  rejoicing  with  those  that  rejoice;  a  wan- 
derer who  had  not  where  to  lay  his  head,  and  did  not  be- 
lieve in  the  value  of  utopia,  and  cared  nothing  for  this 
world's  empty  glory — how  unmessianic  was  his  whole  life 
and  work  and  thought! 

The  messianic  title  as  expression  of  the  innermost  essence  of 
the  person  of  Jesus  was  as  insufficient  and  dangerous  as  the 
Jewish  people's  kingdom  of  God  and  thought  of  judgment  were  to 
that  which  Jesus  brought  in  his  preaching.  And  while  Jesus 
could  speak  artlessly  of  God's  kingdom  and  judgment,  and  could 
pour  the  new  spirit  into  the  old  forms,  he  did  not  find  himself  in 
the  same  situation  when  he  transferred  the  messianic  title  to  him- 
self. For  kingdom  of  God  and  judgment  were  still  in  the  futmre. 
In  the  moment  in  which  Jesus  publicly  accepted  the  messianic 
title  he  made  the  future  present.' 

Hence  the  silence  of  Jesus  was  the  best  means  at  his  dis- 
posal. Mention  was  made,  a  few  pages  back,  of  the  objec- 
tion to  this  raised  by  such  critics  as  Martineau  and  others. 
Why  did  he  not  instruct  the  people  as  to  the  way  in  which 
he  would  have  his  messianity  understood  ?  Bousset's  answer 
to  this  seems  satisfactory,  namely,  that  it  ignores  the  inner 
fineness  and  tenderness  of  the  wrestling  self -consciousness 
of  Jesus,  and  the  volcanic  character  of  the  ground  on  which 
he  stood.  A  public  messianic  confession  of  Jesus  would 
not  have  had  the  logical  effect  to  be  expected  from  his  mes- 
sianic content  which  was  new  and  unassimilable  to  them, 
but  would  have  been  almost  wholly  determined  by  their 
own  apperceptive  mass;  and  the  result  would  have  been 
explosive.  All  Jesus'  opponents  would  have  massed  against 
him  in  deadly  hostility. 

But  we  have  not  yet  done  with  our  main  question:  Why 
did  Jesus  at  once  refuse  to  proclaim  himself  as  Messiah, 
and  yet  take  to  his  innermost  essence  such  strange  messianic 

1  BoussET,  op.  cit.,  p.  86. 


Jesus  441 

hopes?  Because,  from  other  considerations,  it  was  neces- 
sary for  him  to  do  so.  If  he  was  to  be  intelligible  to  him- 
self, the  messianic  thought  was  indispensable  to  him,  as  the 
idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  and  judgment  was  indispensable 
if  he  was  to  be  understood  by  the  people. 

If  Jesus  did  not  consider  himself  to  be  the  Messiah,  then  he 
must  have  thought  of  himself  as  a  prophet.  This  by  itself  would 
possibly  be  suflScient  to  explain  all  that  was  extraordinary  in  his 
mode  of  life.  But  Jesus  could  not  come  forward  as  a  prophet — 
e.  g.,  like  John  —  because  the  prophet  always  points  to  one  higher 
than  himself,  and  thereby  assigns  a  provisional  character  to  him- 
self; while  Jesus  knew  himself  to  be  God's  final  messenger,  after 
whom  none  higher  can  come.  That  is  the  decisive  consideration. 
The  superhuman  self -consciousness  of  Jesus,  which  knows  nothing 
higher  than  itself  save  God,  and  can  expect  none  other,  could  find 
satisfactory  expression  in  no  other  form  but  that  of  the  messianic 
idea.' 

If  the  record  is  to  be  relied  upon  at  all,  it  is  certainly 
true  that  Jesus  believed  that  he  communed  with  God  more 
intimately  than  anyone  else  had  done.  He  spoke  the  last 
decisive  word;  he  fulfilled;  he  was  God's  last  messenger — 
such  was  his  conviction.  The  sureness  and  strength  of  his 
work,  the  sunniness,  clearness,  and  freshness  of  his  whole 
being,  reposed  upon  this  foundation.  On  the  basis  of  the 
sources,  his  super-prophetic  consciousness,  the  consciousness 
of  being  fulfiUer,  of  sitting  regnant  forever  on  the  throne  of 
history,  cannot  be  stricken  from  the  portrait  of  his  person 
w'ithout  destroying  it.  But  in  his  surroundings  the  mes- 
sianic thought  afforded  him  the  sole  possibility  of  giving 

1  Wernle,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  pp.  44,  45.  In  making  this  quotation.  I  do  not  wish 
to  seem  to  imply  agreement  with  Wernle's  introducing  the  word  "  superhuman  "  in 
this  manner.  If  it  refers  to  something  other  than  human,  we  know  neither  that  it 
is  worthier  than  the  ideally  human,  nor  indeed  what  it  is.  Besides,  the  word  points 
in  the  opposite  direction  from  that  humanization  of  the  messianic  ideal  on  the  part 
of  Jesus  which  Wernle,  too,  recognizes. 

It  may  save  from  misunderstanding,  also,  if  we  distinguish  between  Jesus'  own 
conception  of  his  finality  and  the  ethico-religious  content  of  his  personality,  and 
find  his  dignity  in  the  latter  rather  than  in  the  former. 


442    The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Keligion 

expression  and  form  to  this  his  consciousness,  inasmuch  as 
that  thought  exhibited  the  figure  of  the  final  royal  fulfiller, 
as  popular  hope  had  sketched  it  in  the  earthly  colors  so 
attractive  to  the  people. 

Thus,  for  Jesus,  the  messianic  thought  was  the  sole  possible 
form  of  his  inner  consciousness,  and  yet — an  insufficient  form;  a 
necessity — but  also  a  grievous  burden,  under  which  he  went  on 
his  way  in  silence  almost  to  the  end  of  his  life;  a  conviction  in 
which  he  never  found  real  joy.' 

Before  seeking  to  draw  conclusions  from  this  brief  dis- 
cussion, we  may  refer  to  the  special  forms  in  which  the 
messianic  consciousness  of  Jesus  came  to  expression.  The 
title  "Son  of  David,"  best  describing  the  earthly  side  of  the 
messianic  hope,  Jesus  explicitly  repudiated.^  Nor  was  the 
title  "Son  of  God"  a  self -designation.^  The  only  remaining 
messianic  self -designation  of  Jesus  is  "Son  of  man."  But 
did  he  use  it?  "Would  that  we  knew  for  certain!"  exclaims 
Wernle.  Most  investigators  admit  that  the  phrase  is  really 
a  messianic  title  of  dignity.  The  synoptists  mean  it  to  be 
such  when  used  of  Jesus.  The  fact  that  historically  and 
philologically  it  meant  homo,  a  human  being,  must  not  blind 
us  to  the  fate  of  the  designation  according  to  which  it  was 
dehumanized  by  so  much  as  it  was  messianized.  This,  how- 
ever, does  not  render  it  impossible  that  Jesus,  in  case  he 
used  it,  reverted  to  the  original  significance  of  the  title. 
However  this  may  be,  in  the  time  of  Jesus  the  Messiah-man 
was  no  longer  the  earthly  king  from  the  house  of  David  of 
the  popular  hope,  but  a  super-earthly  being,  coming  down 
from  heaven  where  he  was  with  God  from  the  beginning  of 

1  BoussET,  op.  cit.,  p.  88.  2  Matt.  12 :  35  ff. 

3 "Son"  does  not  appear  to  be  used  in  the  sense  of  a  title  in  Matt.  11:27.  So, 
also,  BocssET.  But  Weenle  thinks  it  is  "the  expression  of  the  closest  intimacy 
with  God,  of  the  most  absolute  trust  in  him"  (p.  53).  But,  for  one  thing,  the  joy 
that  he  had  in  the  word  is  not  consistent  with  the  sorrow  that  the  messianic  title 
gave  him;  and,  for  another,  it  nowhere  signifies  primarily  the  filial  feeling  over 
which  Jesus  is  rejoicing  here.  The  identification  of  "Son  of  God"  and  "Messiah" 
lacks  documentary  support  from  Jewish  literature. 


Jesus  443 

the  world,  appearing  with  divine  glory,  even  judging  the 
world,  arrogating  thus  the  rightful  prerogative  of  God  alone. 
It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  if  Jesus  appropriated  the  title, 
he  meant  thereby  to  reject  its  national,  and  to  accept  its 
supramundane,  content. 

But  did  Jesus  appropriate  the  title?  May  it  not  be  a 
deposit  of  later  tradition?     Certainly 

one  is  struck  by  the  fact  that  he  speaks  of  himself  in  the  third 
person,  as  though  of  someone  else,  and  that  he  prophesies  his 
coming  as  if  he  was  already  removed  from  earth.  It  is  as  easy  to 
conceive  of  these  forms  of  expression  being  used  by  the  disciples 
after  Jesus'  death  as  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  Jesus  himself 
employing  them  while  he  was  still  in  their  midst.' 
In  the  mouth  of  Jesus  this  constant  speaking  of  himself  in 
the  third  person  seems  affected,  and  inconsistent  with  the 
otherwise  sobriety  and  simplicity  of  his  speech — though 
with  our  modern  changed  custom  and  consciousness  we 
may  not  at  all  be  in  a  position  to  pass  judgment  upon 
what  was  affectation  in  that  day,  and  what  was  not. 
It  may  be  further  pointed  out  that  in  some  synoptic  pas- 
sages the  later  evangelist  has  introduced  the  title  "Son  of 
man"  where  originally  there  was  only  an  "I"  in  the  tra- 
dition.^ Finally,  it  seems  strange  enough  that  Jesus,  a 
plain  man  walking  on  the  earth,  should  have  any  liking  for 
the  apparently  fantastic  claims  to  the  dignity  of  "Son  of 
man"  as  understood  in  late  Judaism.  The  title  pointed  to 
pre-existence  and  to  judgeship  of  the  world.  But  if  we  are 
to  trust  the  oldest  tradition,  Jesus  never  thought  of  ascrib- 
ing a  pre-mundane  existence  to  himself;  nor  did  he  claim  to 
be  judge  of  the  world. 

In  view  of  these  considerations,  one  may  well  refuse  to  be 
BO  certain  as  the  church  has  been  that  Jesus  called  himself 
the   Son  of  man;  at  all  events,  one  can   make  the   asser- 

1  Weknle,  op.  cit..  Vol.  I,  pp.  53,  54. 
2£.  g.,  cf.  Matt.  IC:  13  with  Mark  8:27. 


44J:    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

tion  only  with  a  certain  reservation.  One  thing  is  impor- 
tant: If  Jesus  ever  did  speak  of  himself  as  the  Son  of  man, 
he  can  only  have  done  so  a  short  time  before  his  death,  and 
in  the  expectation  of  that  death.  To  be  sure,  the  keenest 
critical  scruples  have  been  urged  against  the  historicity  of 
Jesus'  predictions  of  his  death.  But  the  scene  in  Geth- 
semane  refutes  the  critics.  It  points  backward.  Jesus' 
clearness  as  to  his  fate,  and  his  resignation  to  the  will  of 
God,  must  have  been  the  gradual  result  of  his  struggling. 
Intimations,  growing  stronger  and  stronger,  must  have  per- 
vaded his  soul  before  Gethsemane.  It  could  not  have  been 
otherwise.  The  fruitlessness  of  his  endeavor  with  his 
people  grew  increasingly  apparent — the  certainty  that  they 
walked  the  way  of  ruin  and  were  rejected  of  God.  All  the 
darker  must  the  fate  of  his  own  life  have  seemed  to  him,  all 
the  surer  the  intimation  that  his  work  would  bring  him  to  a 
cruel  end.  And  it  is  all  the  more  probable  that  toward  the 
end  Jesus  spoke  to  his  disciples  of  his  bitter  and  gloomy 
forebodings.  If  there  be  historicity  anywhere,  that  of 
Jesus'  intimations  of  his  passion  and  death  would  seem  to 
be  assured. 

Our  understanding  of  Jesus'  thought  of  the  Son  of  man, 
or  his  intimations  as  regards  the  Son  of  man,  is  dependent 
upon  this  consideration.  Facing  his  fate,  Jesus  turned  to 
Daniel's  promise,  and  related  it  to  himself.  Death  and  de- 
struction staring  him  in  the  face,  he  kept  his  confidence  in 
his  cause  and  his  God  intact  in  this  form.  After  his  death 
he  will  be  the  Son  of  man  coming  in  glory  on  the  clouds 
of  heaven. 

In  this  connection  the  limits  to  be  assigned  to  Jesus'  use 
of  the  title  are  evident.  This  title  was  not  a  constant  and 
ever-recurring  self-designation  on  the  part  of  Jesus.  Only 
at  the  end  of  his  life,  and  in  a  few  instances,  did  he  use  it. 
Thus,  the  stereotyped  way  the  synoptists  represent  Jesus  as 


Jesus  445 

using  the  title  is  not  historical.  It  is  not  the  earthly,  but 
the  dogmatic,  Jesus  of  the  community  that  is  uppermost  in 
their  minds. 

With  these  data  in  our  possession — the  conclusion  of  the 
study  of  specialists — we  may  revert  to  our  original  ques- 
tion: Supposing  Jesus  put  forth  messianic  claims,  how 
should  our  attitude  toward  him  be  affected  thereby  today  ? 
Are  we  sorry  he  did  so  ? 

We  must  admit,  with  Wernle,  Wrede,  and  others,  I 
think,  that  the  "titles  turned  out  to  the  misfortune  of  the 
new  religion."  Jesus'  expurgation  of  the  titles  of  their  tra- 
ditional "superhuman" — that  is,  therefore,  subhuman  con- 
tent— did  not  prevent  the  Jewish  Christian  from  reinstating 
them  approximately  in  their  old  positions,  or  else  informing 
them  with  perverted  new  ideas;  nor  the  gentile  Christians, 
by  physical-metaphysical  speculations,  from  replacing  the 
historical  Jesus  with  a  mythological  being.  The  question 
is  as  to  which  is  of  primary  importance,  the  human 
historical  Jesus,  or  a  mythological  being  from  heaven; 
and  which  is  to  be  reverenced,  Jesus  himself  or  his 
titles.  Another  question  already  mentioned,  perplexing  and 
torturing  enough,  ever  obtrudes:  Was  it  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
the  empirical  man  of  Galilee,  that  supplied  the  dynamic 
with  which  ecclesiastical  Christianity  has  won  its  victories 
during  all  these  centuries;  or  was  it  the  sum  of  Messiah 
predicates  of  which  he  was  the  hypothetical  bearer  ?  Was 
Jesus  the  power,  or,  so  to  speak,  the  mere  peg  on  which  the 
power  was  hung  ?  At  all  events,  if  the  mythological  being 
has  been  the  real  in  the  past  and  Jesus  the  doketic,  the  tables 
.  must  now  be  turned,  since  a  myth  found  out  loses  its  power. 
Jesus-ism  must  take  the  place  of  messianism.  And  whether 
this  great  change  shall  prove  to  be  a  further  development  of 
historical  Christianity,  or  a  new  religion;  whether  it  means 
a  period  of  religious  disintegration  and  chaos,  or  a  new  life 


446    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

for  the  soul  which  may  be  in  birth-throes  today,  is  an  alter- 
native which  must  fill  all  serious  minds  with  the  keenest 
anxiety  and  pain  of  which  they  are  capable.  But  these 
reflections  are  carrying  us  too  far  afield. 

Our  purpose  now  is  to  show  that  the  energy  and  worth  of 
the  character  of  Jesus  are  not  abridged  by  his  appropriation 
of  the  messianic  title.  For  one  thing,  the  reincorporation 
into  that  title,  on  the  part  of  his  followers,  of  the  old  content 
which  he  repudiated — repudiated  at  the  cost  of  his  life — was 
a  perversity  and  misfortune  for  which  he  cannot  righteously 
be  held  responsible.  He  did  his  utmost  to  destroy  that  con- 
tent, on  the  one  hand,  and  to  make  his  followers  morally  and 
religiously  incapable  of  hospitality  to  it,  on  the  other.  For 
another  tiling,  while  the  messianic  idea,  like  the  angelic,  was 
propagated  into  the  place  of  primacy,  the  occupation  of 
which  was  the  prerogative  of  God  alone,  nothing  of  this 
kind  is  traceable  in  the  thought  of  Jesus  himself.  Jesus 
did  not  transcend  the  limits  of  the  purely  human.  He  did 
not  put  himself  alongside  the  Almighty  God.  If  he  bound 
his  disciples  to  himself,  it  was  but  to  lead  them  beyond  him- 
self to  the  living  God.  He  would  not  himself  be  the  goal, 
but  only  the  way  to  the  heavenly  Father.  Instead  of  iden- 
tifying himself  with  God,  he  sharply  separated  himself  from 
God,  saying  that  no  one  was  good  save  God  alone.  He  put 
himself  on  the  side  of  humanity  in  its  struggle  after  good- 
ness. He  came  to  be  baptized  of  John,  which  was  a  baptism 
of  the  forgiveness  of  sins  and  of  repentance.  To  the  woman 
who  pressed  upon  him  with  stormy  enthusiasm,  he  answered: 
"Yea,  rather,  blessed  are  they  that  hear  the  word  of  God  and 
keep  it."'  He  said  that  whoever  heard  and  kept  Gocfs  word 
was  his  mother,  brother,  sister.^  He  never  demanded  faith 
in  himself,  in  the  sense  that  he  demanded  faith  in  God. 
In  all  his  parables  he  put  man  face  to  face  with  the  living 

iLuken:27f.  2Mark3:33f. 


Jesus  447 

God,  leaving  his  own  person  entirely  in  the  background/ 
Even  in  his  appropriation  of  the  idea  of  Son  of  man  he 
never  transcended  the  human  limits,  placing  himself  on  the 
side  of  God.  For  it  is  inconceivable  that  Jesus,  who  with 
the  utmost  energy  urged  his  disciples  to  fear  God,  who  could 
cast  both  soul  and  body  into  hell,  should  have  arrogated  to 
himself  the  divine  judicial  prerogative.  It  is  evident  that 
the  synoptists  at  this  point  reflect  the  dogmatics  of  the  com- 
munity, and  not  the  opinion  of  Jesus. 

But,  more  important  still,  to  the  mind  of  Jesus  the  main 
thing  was  not  the  messianic  idea,  but  his  own  self -conscious- 
ness. He  was  the  treasure;  the  idea  was  the  earthen  vessel 
which  held  the  treasure.  He  himself,  not  the  idea,  was  the 
gospel.  His  greatness  is  to  be  discovered,  not  in  the  title 
which  he  employed,  but  in  his  power  to  overcome  the  evil 
and  danger  to  which  the  title  exposed  him.  If  the  story  of 
his  temptation  means  anything,  it  means  that  he  mastered 
the  title  instead  of  its  mastering  him.  The  messianic  dream 
had  conquered  all  others;  he  conquered  it.  He  was  the 
Life;   it  was  the  tool  of  the  Life — a  tool  which  had  been 

1  "All  religious  worship,  all  supplication  in  prayer,  directed  to  Jesus,  all  treat- 
ment of  him  as  a  divine  Lord  of  the  universe,  is  untenable  from  the  modern  point  of 
view.  All  this  was  not  only  justifiable,  but  necessary,  so  long  as  Jesus,  in  his 
humanness,  was  at  the  same  time  'very  God,'  i.  e.,  the  second  one  of  the  three  per- 
sons of  the  Trinity.  But  this  latter  conviction  once  abandoned,  such  attitude  as 
stated  above  to  the  man  Jesus  amounts  to  an  abatement  of  the  worship  which  is 
due  God  alone,  to  a  confusion  of  the  divine  and  the  human,  and  to  an  injury  to  the 
unity  of  the  religious  life.  The  Protestant  rejection  of  the  cult  of  saints  arose  from 
the  deepest  religious  feeling.  Must  not  the  retention  of  a  divine  worship  of  Jesus 
awaken  a  similar  emotion,  now  that  great  changes  of  life  and  of  concepts  compel  us 
to  include  the  personality  and  work  of  Jesus  entirely  within  the  picture  of  humanity 
which  has  been  deepened  from  within  1  At  this  decisive  point  there  is  no  middle 
ground  between  Yea  and  Nay."— Professoe  Eudolp  Eucken,  op.  cit.,  pp.  434  f. 

Still,  this  statement  of  Eucken  omits  a  consideration  of  decisive  importance. 
It  is  true  that  God  is  the  solo  object  of  religious  faith  and  worship.  But,  for  the 
Christian,  it  is  the  God  of  whom  such  a  one  as  Jesus  can  with  good  conscience  be 
the  prophet.  While  wo  know  nothing  of  the  extra-historical  existence  and  activity 
of  Jesus,  we  trust  and  worship  the  God  the  content  of  whose  will  is  best  known  from 
the  moral  goodness  of  the  man  Jesus  of  history.  Jesus  thus  has  abiding  importance 
to  the  life  of  prayer.  "He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father."  Jesus  is 
source  and  guarantee  and  determinant  of  that  specific  relationship  to  God  which  is 
called  Christian, 


448    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

constructed  for  the  destruction  of  Israel's  enemy,  but  which 
it  was  his  high  mission  to  reconstruct  and  retemper  into  an 
instrument  of  healing  and  mercy  for  the  nations.  The  idea 
did  not  make  the  Life ;  the  Life  picked  up  the  clumsy  misfit 
idea,  cleansed  it,  reorganized  it,  humanized  it,  and  assigned 
it  a  function  to  himself  and  to  others,  for  which  by  nature  it 
was  disqualified — even  as  that  Life  has  ever  regenerated  the 
natural  into  the  spiritual,  caused  old  things  to  pass  away, 
and  made  all  things  new.  Do  we  ask  ourselves  what  the 
moral  energy  of  that  Life  must  have  been  to  be  able  to 
chanofe  an  idea  whose  content  was  a  sword  into  an  idea 
whose  content  was  the  cross,  an  idea  whose  content  was  a 
kingdom  of  might  into  one  whose  content  was  a  kingdom  of 
love?  In  the  face  of  hell,  and  of  the  accumulated  inertia 
of  centuries  of  tradition,  Jesus  did  precisely  this.  For  his 
time  and  his  surroundings,  the  thought  of  a  suffering  and 
dying  Messiah  was  something  uncanny,  unheard  of,  indeed. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  Jesus  could  have  gained  the  thought 
of  a  suffering  and  dying  Messiah  out  of  the  Old  Testament 
even.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  thought  is  there.  It  was 
only  on  the  basis  of  their  faith  in  the  Crucified  that  the 
church  of  Jesus  imported  it  into  the  Old  Testament.'  Jesus 
stood  entirely  alone  among  his  people,  alone  in  isolated  and 
incommunicable  grandeur,  in  the  presence  of  the  ways  of 
God  that  are  past  finding  out  and  of  a  task  that  was  over- 
powering. It  was  his  mission  to  ennoble  and  transfigure 
suffering  and  defeat — the  greatest  scandal  to  all  Jewry;  to 
make  sufferingr  for  the  sake  of  service  the  crown  of  all  that 
the  church  could  believe  of  the  Messiah.  Jesus  consum- 
mated his  task  under  partial  dependence  on  the  thought  of 
the  Son  of  man:  the  form  in  which  he  could  render  intel- 
ligible both  the  personal  relation  of  trust  between  him  and 
God,  and  the  conviction  that  the  cup  which  he  drank  was 

1  "Isa.,  chap.  53,  is,  manifold  as  the  possible  interpretations  are,  not  mes- 
sianic."—Bousset,  op.  cit.,  p.  96. 


Jesus  449 

pressed  to  his  lips  by  the  Father's  hand.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
not  in  the  expression  "Son  of  man,"  it  is  in  Gethsemane,  that 
his  life's  quiet,  deep  greatness  and  its  innermost  ground  of 
certainty  unveil  themselves  to  us.  Finally,  in  his  humaniza- 
tion  of  the  messianic  idea,  to  which  we  have  already  referred, 
it  is  clear  that  the  real  values  of  life  were  to  him  human,  not 
messianic;  i.  e.,  so  far  as  the  messianic  was  not  human.  And 
this  is  consistent  with  his  central  thought  of  the  infinite 
worth  of  man,  to  which  we  shall  turn  presently.  It  is  not 
the  messianic,  it  is  the  human,  that  is  divine.  Jesus'  con- 
sciousness of  his  super-prophetic  significance  was  a  human 
consciousness.  He  transcended  the  authority  of  the  past; 
he  was  more  than  kings  and  prophets,  than  David  and 
Solomon  and  Moses,  than  temple  and  tradition,  than  custom 
and  institution ;  but  all  this  is  due  to  his  filial  intimacy  with 
God,  to  his  joy  in  God,  to  his  sense  of  his  mission  in  doing 
the  will  of  God,  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  wealth  of  his  dis- 
position, to  his  love  and  service  for  all  men.  But  these  are 
not  messianic,  but  human,  possibilities;  otherwise  his  gospel 
is  no  gospel  to  man.  These  are  not  messianic  predicates 
save  as  Jesus  humanized  messianism.  They  are  not  im- 
ported into  the  race  by  a  supposititious  being  from  heaven, 
but  born  out  of  the  race,  of  which  Jesus  is  the  "bright  con- 
summate flower."  And  we  should  receive  the  suggestion 
that  a  sense  of  justice  ought  to  prompt  us  to  credit  Jesus, 
and  the  race  of  which  he  is  the  best  representative,  with  the 
production  of  those  values  which  hitherto  have  been  venerated 
as  the  gift  of  a  heavenly  being  whose  mythological  character 
cannot  be  refuted;  and  that  we  should  find  the  divine  in 
human  personality  rather  than  in  mythological  figures.  If, 
now,  Jesus  humanized  messianism,  we  may  keep  the  human 
and  let  the  messianic  go.  We  are  not  Jews  of  the  first  cen- 
tury. Left  to  ourselves,  our  religious  life  would  not  origi- 
nate the  messianic  concept.     It  is  not  now,  and  it  never  was, 


450    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Keligion 

the  messianic  that  is  divine ;  it  is  the  human  that  is  divine ; 
it  is  the  7nen  who  forgive  their  enemies,  and  do  good  to  those 
who  despitefully  treat  them  and  speak  evil  of  them,  that  are 
the  children  of  God.  Instead  of  the  messianic  title  honor- 
ing Jesus,  he  honored  it;  it  was  not  it,  it  was  he,  that  was 
great ;  and  if  we  are  to  venerate  greatness,  we  must  venerate 
him  rather  than  it.  If  his  effect  upon  the  title  was  its  morali- 
zation,  we  cannot  possibly  go  astray  if  we  find  the  divine  in 
the  moral  and  not  in  the  messianic. 

If  thus  his  appropriation  of  the  title  was  its  destruction; 
if  the  way  he  used  it  revealed  his  spirit  and  his  judgment  of 
values ;  and  if  necessity  was  upon  him  in  his  time  and  place, 
the  expression  of  divine  reality  in  Jesus  should  shine  more 
luminously  to  the  modern  man  than  ever  before,  as  he  sees 
that  the  title  constituted  a  part  of  the  humiliation,  rather 
than  the  honor,  of  Jesus. 

Leaving  this  whole  controversy  for  good  and  all,  what, 
once  yet  again,  is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  ?  Even 
suppose  we  grant  that  all  the  high  things  which  the  evan- 
gelists say  of  Jesus,  and  put  into  his  mouth  as  deep  mys- 
teries which  he  said  of  himself,  were  indeed  his  own  opinion 
of  his  position  in  the  world  and  toward  the  world,  still  this 
is  not  the  main  thing  on  which  emphasis  is  to  be  placed.  It 
may  seem  wonderful  to  us  today  that  a  man  who  shared 
"the  common  needs  of  common  men,  hunger  for  food,  hunger 
for  God;"  who  considered  doing  the  will  of  God  his  meat 
and  drink,  and  being  servant  of  all  his  real  greatness,  could 
believe  that  he  was  King  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  that  a 
heavenly  being  inhabited  him  in  objective  reality.  And 
today  some  will  reject  Jesus  on  this  account  as  an  Ekstatiker 
and  fanatic ;  others  will  cancel  all  these  passages  from  the 
gospels  as  spurious;  still  others  will  hold  themselves  obli- 
gated by  these  utterances  to  confess  all  these  thoughts  as 
their  confession  of  faith — easy  transition  to  the  additional 


Jesus  451 

confession  of  the  doctrine  of  tlie  Trinity  and  of  the  two 
natures,  as  taught  by  the  old  Greek  church.  But  a  Satan 
could  do  all  this  and  be  a  Satan  still.  Besides,  at  that  time 
many  held  that  they  were  the  promised  Messiah;  many 
believed  in  a  real  indwelling  of  an  alien  spirit,  good  or  bad, 
in  their  breast;  Paul  believed  that  "Christ"  and  the  "Holy 
Spirit"  dwelt  in  him  after  the  analogy  of  the  idea  according 
to  which  a  demon  dwelt  in  a  sick  person.  It  was  therefore 
simply  an  idea  of  the  time,  according  to  which  the  violent, 
the  unconscious,  the  overmastering,  the  heroic  and  tragic,  in 
man  was  due  to  the  habitation  of  man  by  an  alien  being. 
That  Jesus  believed  such  of  himself  is  simply  evidence  that 
he  had  power  above  his  power;  not  that  he  exalted  himself, 
nor  that  there  was  a  special  divine  being  in  him.  If  the 
form  of  his  valuation  of  his  precious  inner  possession  was 
borrowed  from  the  categories  of  his  time,  we  know  psycho- 
logically that  he  could  not  have  done  otherwise;  and  in  our 
appropriation  and  appreciation  of  the  incomparable  wealth 
of  the  content  of  his  consciousness  we  should  not  stumble  at 
the  strangeness  of  its  form.  We  may  not  forget  that  he 
chose  death  on  the  cross,  rather  than  the  messianism  and 
miraculism  and  materialism  of  his  people ;  the  thorny  path 
of  preaching  and  serving  and  suffering,  rather  than  the 
King's  highway  of  glory.  It  is  enough:  no  one  can  yield 
himself  to  the  influence  of  this  Man  and  not  become  different 
from  what  he  was  before ;  from  being  a  natural  man  one  will 
become  a  spiritual  man;  old  things  will  pass  away,  and  all 
things  will  become  new. 

4.  We  have  been  observing  the  strange  world  in  which 
Jesus  lived — a  world  of  angels  and  demons,  of  miracles 
and  messianism.  Jesus  partook  of  that  world,  thought  its 
thoughts  and  felt  its  feelings.  But  we  do  not  live  in  that 
world;  no  angel  speaks  to  us,  no  demon  dwells  in  our  sick, 
no  miracle  relieves  our  distress,  no  king  of  glory  comes  on 


452    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

tlie  clouds  of  heaven,  and  no  cataclysm  replaces  the  natural 
and  moral  order  of  our  world.  That  old  world  is  forever 
lost  to  us.  But  can  we  lose  it  and  keep  Jesus  ?  May  Jesus 
still  be  the  Lord  and  Leader  of  life?  May  he  still  be  the 
source  of  strength  and  peace  and  joy  ?  In  deliberating  upon 
these  questions,  we  have  just  opposed  his  morals  to  messian- 
ism,  in  part  to  his  own  messianism.  It  was  suggested  that 
the  worth  and  permanence  of  the  former  are  not  only  not 
seriously  imperiled  by  the  latter,  but  that  they  nullify  the 
error  and  danger  in  the  latter. 

But,  in  the  very  midst  of  these  deliberations,  we  meet 
with  a  new  difficulty,  arising  from  Jesus'  moral  views  them- 
selves. Are  the  precepts  and  practices  of  Jesus  consistent 
with  the  accredited  modern  ethical  principles  ?  Are  obedi- 
ence to  the  moral  counsels  of  Jesus  and  the  fulfilment  of  the 
tasks  of  modern  civilization  compatible?  Do  the  morally 
necessary  cultural  tasks  of  our  time  lie  outside  the  horizon 
of  his  aims  and  thoughts  ?  What  if  Jesus'  own  words  sepa- 
rate us  from  Jesus'  own  self,  while  we  yet  know  that  it  is 
through  the  deep  binding  of  our  lives  to  him  that  new  life 
can  begin  with  us,  which  is  well-pleasing  to  God?  It  is  to 
this  serious  problem  that  we  should  now  address  ourselves. 

a)  Apologists  have  sought  to  establish  the  thesis  that 
Jesus  was  positively  interested  in  the  social  and  secular  goods 
and  ideals  of  the  natural  life  of  man.  And  many  passages 
from  the  gospels  may  be  adduced  in  support  of  this  conten- 
tion. His  high  appreciation  of  the  family  life  may  be 
inferred  from  his  earnest  protest  against  the  current  frivo- 
lous practice  of  divorce,  and  from  his  spiritual  interpretation 
of  the  commandment  against  adultery.  Any  reference  to 
his  own  celibacy  should  recognize  his  words  concerning 
those  who  were  "eunuchs  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven's  sake." 
And  his  seemingly  harsh  conditions  of  discipleship,  hating 
father  and  mother,  may  be  but  a  reflection  of  the  religious 


Jesus  453 

energy  and  heroism  of  his  soul.  Certainly  such  a  passage 
is  offset  by  his  condemnation  of  those  children  who  withdrew 
help  from  their  parents  and  diverted  it  to  purposes  of  cult. 
Nor  may  we  forget  that  in  the  relation  of  father  to  son  and 
son  to  father  Jesus  found  the  best  expression  of  his  peculiar 
religious  proclamation.  Jesus  loved  children,  and  saw  in 
the  childlike  disposition  of  humbleness  and  trust  the  typical 
disposition  for  his  kingdom. 

Likewise,  one  may  make  out  a  case  in  favor  of  Jesus' 
interest  in  science  and  art.  That  he  did  not  prosecute  such 
science  as  the  scribes  knew,  that  he  was  no  student  of  their 
scholasticism,  may  very  well  be  set  down  to  his  credit.  That 
he  was  willing  to  be  crucified  for  the  truth's  sake  will  make 
him  forever  sacred  to  men  of  science.  And  if  he  was  no 
artist  by  profession,  his  parables,  his  portraits  of  different 
types  of  men,  show  that  he  was  artist  by  the  grace  of  God. 
His  joy  in  the  world  of  nature  points  in  the  same  direction. 

Again,  there  is  "the  struggle  of  existence"  in  which  the 
modern  man  is  engaged.  He  stands  in  the  midst  of  indus- 
trial and  social  and  political  warfare.  The  laborer  is  seeking 
a  larger  share  in  the  goods  of  life.  And  there  is  no  victory 
for  him  without  this  warfare.  Political  warfare  is  a  natural 
necessity  in  order  to  the  attainment  of  social  right,  social 
justice  and  freedom. 

Now,  can  the  man  who  is  struggling  up  out  of  economic 
and  social  need,  and  conquering  better  conditions  of  living, 
count  on  the  friendship  of  Jesus  in  this  matter?  "Blessed 
are  the  meek,  for  they  shall  inherit  the  earth."  Are  humility 
and  meekness  political  virtues  ?  "  Love  your  enemies,  bless 
them  that  curse  you."  Is  this  a  doctrine  of  congress  and 
parliament?  But  apologists  reply  that  Jesus  died  on  the 
cross  because  he  brought  not  peace,  but  a  sword.  He  had 
not  only  the  meekness  of  the  lamb,  but  the  wrath  of  the  lion. 
His  "blessed  are  the  meek"  does  not  exclude  a  "blessed  are 


454    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

those  wlio  fight  for  God's  cause  on  earth,  for  righteousness, 
for  freedom,  and  against  repression  and  robbery  of  one's 
neighbor,"  The  denunciations  of  the  twenty-third  chapter 
of  Matthew  reveal  a  spirit  that  is  capable  of  war. 

h)  The  above  is  the  usual  vindication  of  the  position  that 
Jesus  had  an  interest  in  the  things  to  which  the  modern  man 
devotes  his  life.  But  it  must  be  earnestly  protested  that  the 
vindication  is  only  apparent.  It  is  both  superficial  and,  for 
the  most  part,  irrelevant.  And  it  is  made  under  a  miscon- 
ception of  the  merit  and  worth  of  Jesus,  of  the  meaning  and 
purpose  of  his  work.  The  inner  as  well  as  the  outer  remote- 
ness of  Jesus  from  us  is  not  grasped  by  these  apologists. 

There  was  no  natural  science  to  Jesus,  such  as  we  know; 
nor  had  the  thought  of  natural  law  begun  the  concatenation 
of  reality  in  the  midst  of  which  men  lived.  Dominion  over 
nature  had  not  been  widened  and  deepened  by  methodic 
investigation.  For  Jesus  neither  the  form  nor  the  fruit  of 
scientific  work  existed.  He  did  not  know  the  aim  of  such 
work.  It  is  true  that  this  might  be  so,  and  yet  Jesus'  lead- 
ership in  moral  knowledge  not  be  affected  thereby,  since 
scientific  success  is  not  always  conjoined  with  the  simplicity 
and  sagacity  of  moral  wisdom.  Moral  insight  does  not 
spring  from  science,  but  from  conscience.  Still,  the  fact 
remains  that  Jesus  did  not  know  of  the  vocation  which  we 
call  scientific,  and  had  no  interest  in  it.  The  same  may  be 
said  with  reference  to  art,  and  many  other  things.  As  an 
example  to  be  followed  it  would  be  difficult  for  a  bearer  of 
modern  culture  to  select  a  man  less  adapted  to  his  purpose. 

But  it  is  more  important  to  note  that  he  had  no  deeper 
interest  in  the  work  and  tasks  of  which  he  did  know.  Farming, 
trading,  money-making — he  said  nothing  which  shows  that 
he  realized  the  dignity  and  value  of  these  forms  of  life.  He 
does  not  seem  to  have  thought  that  the  worth  of  a  man 
depends,  as  a  rule,  upon  the  service  which  he  renders  society  in 


Jesus  455 

sucli  ways  as  these.  If  he  had  thought  that  fidelity  to  one's 
vocation  had  the  moral  worth  which  the  experience  of  life 
shows  that  it  has,  it  would  seem  that  he  who  desired  above 
all  things  to  help  men  in  their  moral  needs  would  have 
touched  upon  it  somehow.  But  the  gospels  do  not  say  that  he 
did.  Real  righteousness  and  vocational  fidelity  are  insepa- 
rable, according  to  our  ethical  principles. 

All  the  work  of  civilized  life  brings  care,  feeds  care ;  yet 
we  ought  to  be  care-free — the  sparrows  are.  But  we  are  not 
sparrows,  and  need  more  than  sparrows  do — need  what  nature 
of  itself  does  not  give.  It  is  not  true  to  fact  to  say  that  nature 
about  Jesus  was  kindlier  than  that  which  we  know.  Things 
were  not  so  idyllic  there  as  Renan  has  made  out.  The  seed 
grew  of  itself  indeed,  but  it  had  to  be  sown  then  as  now. 
One  man  could  live  on  locusts  and  wild  honey,  but  all  could 
not.  How  can  one  use  what  one  has  so  as  to  get  more  ?  How 
can  one  save  the  fruits  of  his  toil  ?  How  can  one  find  tools, 
and  fit  one's  tools  to  one's  tasks?  Such  questions  of  care  as 
these  arise  out  of,  and  in  connection  with,  the  work  of  civil- 
ized man;  and  the  only  way  to  be  free  from  such  care  is  to 
have  nothing  to  do  with  such  work.  But  to  work,  to  accu- 
mulate, to  possess — there  is  no  progress  and  no  civilization 
apart  from  these  activities.  It  is  objected  that  Jesus  meant 
simply  that  a  disciple  should  keep  a  free  heart  in  the  midst  of 
his  earthly  calling.  And  it  is  true  that  he  did  mean  this; 
but  he  meant  more  than  this.  By  his  "care  not"  he  meant 
indifference  to  a  life  of  gain.  "Lay  not  up  for  yourselves 
treasures  on  earth,"  is  a  precept  that  makes  capital  impos- 
sible.' Man  is  summoned  to  choose  between  eternal  and 
earthly  good.  The  earthly  treasure  which  we  seek  becomes 
a  master  which  keeps  us  from  serving  God.  The  Protestant 
doctrine  that  we  can  serve  God  by  seeking  earthly  treasures 

1  Hermann,  Die  sittlichen  Weisungen  Jesu.  To  this  work  I  shall  be  indebted  in 
the  following  discussion  of  the  subject. 


456   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

is  no  doctrine  of  Jesus.  We  are  not  wholly  Christian  with 
a  good  conscience  when  we  at  once  insist  upon  the  obligation 
to  obey  the  traditional  words  of  Jesus  and  continue  in 
the  possession  of  our  goods,  or,  as  Jesus  would  say,  in  the 
service  of  capital.  It  is  lack  of  clearness  on  this  point  that 
helps  to  cripple  our  entire  Christianity.  And  biblical  inter- 
pretation still  suffers  from  inability  to  abstract  from  the 
twentieth-century  consciousness,  and  to  reconstruct  the  situa- 
tion in  which  Jesus  lived  and  the  view  of  life  which  he  held. 
Did  Jesus  treat  the  orders  of  society  with  indifference  ?  Did 
he  even  sharply  insist  upon  detachment  from  them  ?  Should 
his  followers  feel  that  family  ties  were  fetters  that  had  to  be 
broken?  It  certainly  seems  so.  Thus,  what  was  required 
in  order  that  men  might  be  united  with  him  then,  separates 
them  from  him  now.  Again,  what  was  his  attitude  to  the 
state?  "Resist  not  evil,"  he  says.  Would  not  the  precepts 
and  the  universalizing  of  the  standpoint  of  Jesus  put  an  end 
to  the  state?  The  exercise  of  authority  and  power  over 
others  is  the  essence  of  the  state.  To  affirm  the  precept, 
"Resist  not  evil,"  is  to  cast  aside  as  worthless  the  instruments 
of  right  which  the  arm  of  the  law  wields. 

The  modern  man  is  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  secular 
and  the  cultural.  He  stands  with  both  feet  upon  the  earth; 
he  seeks  to  enjoy  his  natural  life,  and  to  make  it  as  beautiful 
and  lovely  as  possible.  He  embraces  the  now  and  the  here, 
and  is  a  world-child  with  full  consciousness.  The  same  is 
true  of  modern  peoples  as  well  as  of  modern  individuals. 
But  Jesus  brings  us  into  conflict  with  the  social  tasks  to 
which  we  all  desire  to  cling.  We  would  care  for  our 
families.  We  would  hold  that  the  ties  which  bind  us  to 
our  fellow-men  are  sacred.  We  would  safeguard  the  family 
as  an  indispensable  means  of  moral  development.  We  suffer 
our  liberty  to  be  abridged  by  civil  order,  which,  however, 
we  recognize  as  a  suitable  agency  to  serve  the  collective  life 


Jesus  457 

of  man.  We  co-operate  in  the  interest  of  the  progress  and 
growth  of  law.  Yet  we  succeed  in  no  political  task  without 
doing  violence  to  others  in  the  conflict  of  forces  in  the  state. 
But  how  can  we  thus  participate  in  the  life  of  the  state,  and 
yet  maintain  the  disposition  which  will  triumph  through 
meekness?  "So  shall  it  not  be  among  you,"  said  Jesus,  as 
he  described  the  function  of  the  state.  Shall  we  admire 
the  words  of  Jesus  and  yet  do  the  opposite  to  them? 

Thus,  when  one  looks  beneath  the  surface,  one  sees  that 
the  precepts  of  Jesus  show  no  interest  for  the  morally 
necessary  forms  of  modern  life.  The  labor  of  the  scientist, 
fulfilment  of  one's  secular  calling,  the  perpetuity  of  the 
human  race  through  family  life,  political  and  economic 
advancement,  popular  education,  city  sanitation,  and  the 
like — in  all  this  the  words  and  practices  of  Jesus  and  the 
convictions  and  interests  of  modern  civilized  life  are  pro- 
foundly dissimilar.  No  citation  of  a  passage  here  and  there 
in  the  gospels  can  invalidate  this  general  conclusion.  Jesus 
was  a  man  of  tremendous  earnestness  and  energy;  and  if  he 
had  shared  our  modern  interest  in  these  avenues  of  life,  and 
our  sense  of  their  indispensableness  to  human  well-being, 
we  should  not  have  been  left  in  such  ignorance  on  this 
matter.  There  is  not  one  of  these  forms  of  life  in  which 
Jesus  can  be  imitated  or  his  precepts  obeyed,  and  civiliza- 
tion not  be  menaced  thereby.  To  imitate  him  would  mean 
the  downfall  of  modern  culture. 

Must  we,  then,  choose  between  obedience  to  the  precepts 
of  Jesus,'  since  the  church  worships  him  as  God,^  and  the 

lA  few  years  ago  the  question,  "What  would  Jesus  dol"  was  propounded  as  a 
panacea  for  all  our  social  ills.  But  who  today  would  trust  himself  to  describe  his 
own  life  and  conduct,  had  he  been  born  two  thousand  years  ago  as  the  son  of  the 
Jewish  people  °l  But  what  is  an  impossibility  looking  backward  is  also  such  looking 
forward.  The  gospels  are  not  a  kind  of  automaton  from  which  one  can  mechani- 
cally gain  a  fixed  and  finished  answer  for  each  case,  in  every  age  and  every  situation. 

2  One  should  reflect  upon  the  moral  danger  lurking  in  the  ecclesiastical  dogma 
of  Jesus'  deity,  rendering  his  precepts  infallible  and  universally  binding. 


458    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

morally  earnest  pursuit  of  the  tasks  of  civilized  life?  Or 
may  we  candidly  and  calmly  acknowledge  the  opposition 
which  we  have  exhibited,  and  yet  not  allow  ourselves  to  be 
disengaged  either  from  Jesus  or  from  the  cultural  labor  to 
which  God  in  his  providence  has  called  us?  Whether  we 
can  still  confess  Jesus  Christ  as  our  Leader  and  Lord  is  a 
question  of  the  life  and  death  of  Christianity.  May  we  be 
at  once  outwardly  detached  from  the  precepts  of  Jesus  and 
inwardly  bound  to  his  person?  Nay,  may  the  former  be  a 
condition  of  the  latter? 

c)  Rejecting,  as  we  have,  all  modernization  of  Jesus  by 
exegetical  diplomacy  as  of  evil,  we  may  now  turn  first  of 
all  to  the  two  historical  attempts  to  mediate  between  the 
opposites  which  we  have  described :  one  is  the  Catholic 
scheme,  the  other  the  Protestant. 

(1)  No  sooner  had  the  Catholic  church  entered  upon  its 
world-career  than  it  discovered  the  opposition  between  the 
world's  secular  life  and  the  precepts  and  practices  of  Jesus. 
Like  all  serious  Christianity,  that  church  sought  to  adhere 
strictly  to  the  words  of  Jesus.  But  it  also  sought  to  do  the 
world's  work  and  to  honor  the  natural  life  of  man.  The 
well-known  solution  of  the  problem  at  which  this  church 
arrived  was  to  assign  the  two  indispensable  and  incompatible 
tasks  to  two  different  classes  of  Christians.  One  class 
should  acquire  possessions  and  power,  and  perpetuate  the 
species;  the  other,  obey  the  precepts  of  Jesus — not  exegeti- 
cally  elaborate  and  change  them  until  they  became  assimil- 
able by  secular  life,  but  obey  them  as  they  are,  in  their 
straightforwardness  and  severity.  The  former  class  accumu- 
lated the  goods  which  were  necessary  to  the  saint  in  his 
earthly  life ;  the  latter  acquired  a  merit  which  could  accrue 
to  the  advantage  of  the  former,  making  amends,  indeed,  for 
the  defective  obedience  of  the  former.  Thus,  an  opposition 
which  threatened  the  dissolution  of  Christian  society  came 


Jesus  459 

to  be  built  into  its  very  structure.  It  is  only  in  the  light 
of  this  division  of  labor  that  the  Catholic  ethic  can  be 
understood.  Moreover,  the  device  keeps  the  impression 
alive  that  the  imitation  of  Jesus  is  a  lofty  calling  which  is 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  common  run  of  humanity.  Besides, 
provision  is  thus  made  for  levity  and  seriousness,  for  natu- 
rality  and  angelicalness,  in  the  church,  thereby  guaranteeing 
the  practicability  of  the  Catholic  type  of  Christian  society. 
As  a  contrivance  for  the  combination  of  these  two  widely 
divergent  tendencies,  the  Catholic  church  is  an  excellent 
political  institution.  But  the  best  political  institution  is 
worthless  when  it  comes  to  the  solution  of  a  moral  question. 
In  the  case  in  hand,  the  moral  problem,  in  whose  mastery 
the  Christian  grows  and  ripens,  was  not  solved  by  the 
Catholic  device,  but  fundamentally  evaded.  The  opposition 
should  have  been  fought  out  and  adjusted  on  the  theater  of 
the  inner  life  of  each  individual  himself.  By  substituting 
an  institutional  opposition  for  a  moral,  a  quantitative 
division  for  spiritual  discernment,  the  problem  was  solved 
all  too  easily.  Men,  the  serious  no  less  than  the  frivolous, 
who  are  satisfied  with  such  a  political  solution  of  a  moral 
question,  shirk  the  real  moral  struggle,  and  forego  the  true 
moral  relationships.  The  grossest  immorality  among  the 
"perfect"  in  monastic  orders  was  in  part  the  fruit  of  the 
principles  which  underlie  the  monastic  life.  Still  more,  the 
worst  feature  of  that  life  was  not  its  immorality  even ;  it 
was  the  very  ideal  of  perfection  itself !  It  was  the  merit  of 
Luther  to  have  seen  this. 

(2)  But  how  far  did  Luther's  insight  penetrate  into 
this  subject?  To  live  in  the  natural  and  social  orders  of 
the  world  according  to  their  laws,  to  fill  the  particular 
place  in  existence  which  has  fallen  to  one's  lot  without 
one's  own  choice  even — this,  if  anything,  according  to 
Luther,  must  be  the  will  of  God.     To  fall  in  line  freely 


460    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

and  heartily  with  the  order  of  the  world,  as  specialized  in 
family,  vocation,  social  and  civic  life,  was  to  obey  God. 
In  other  words,  subjection  to  the  morally  necessary  was 
obedience  to  God,  of  which  there  could  be  no  doubt.  To 
assign  the  human  will  other  goals  than  this  was  to  release 
it  from  the  order  of  the  world,  and  to  sacrifice  it  to  caprice. 
How  could  one  be  sure  what  a  dutiful  life  was,  if  it  were  a 
life  in  detachment  from  the  morally  necessary?  And  what 
constitutes  the  discipline  of  life,  if  to  prosecute  one's 
natural  tasks  be  not  to  remain  in  the  school  of  God? 
Thus,  from  Luther's  standpoint,  the  fundamental  defect 
and  injury  of  the  monastic  life  was  its  caprice  and  its 
negation  of  natural  discipline.  But  the  point  of  most 
importance  is  that,  in  the  determination  of  what  was  mor- 
ally necessary,  Luther  set  out,  not  from  the  precepts  of 
Jesus,  but  from  the  requirements  which  result  from  one's 
natural  position  in  the  world,  interpreted  as  the  will  of 
Almighty  God  who  assigns  one  one's  existence.  The  old 
church  set  out  from  the  precepts  of  Jesus  as  the  invariable, 
and  sought  to  square  human  life  by  them  as  criteria,  to  dis- 
criminate the  morally  necessary  by  them.  Luther  reversed 
the  procedure,  and  accorded  primacy  to  the  common  and 
secular  needs  of  man.  But  Luther  was  not  conscious  of 
the  significance  of  the  step  that  he  was  taking.  To  obey 
God,  as  he  counted  obedience,  meant  to  disobey  Jesus;  he 
did  not  see  this;  and  the  proof  that  he  did  not  is  that 
nowhere  did  he  charge  disobedience  to  the  commandments 
of  Jesus  upon  adhesion  to  the  monastic  ideal  as  such. 
Luther  launched  his  anathemas  against  the  monastic  ideal 
on  the  basis  of  his  conviction  that  the  order  of  the  world  was 
itself  the  criterion  of  what  was  morally  necessary,  was  itself 
the  sure  revelation  of  the  will  of  God.  But  Luther  never 
learned  this  from  the  tradition  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  Had 
he  been  questioned  upon  the  subject,  he  would  have  said 


Jesus  461 

that  it  was  the  monastic  ideal  of  the  angelic  life,  and  not 
the  Protestant  ideal  of  fidelity  to  secular  callings  as  obedi- 
ence to  God,  that  was  most  nearly  continuous  with  the 
precepts  and  practices  of  Jesus.  For  Luther  was  a  vera- 
cious and  courageous  man,  and  not  a  connoisseur  in  the 
new  diplomatic  art  of  modernizing  Jesus. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  Catholics  made  no 
attempt  to  mitigate  the  evils  of  the  dualism  between  the 
angelic  ideal  of  the  monks  and  the  morally  necessary 
requirements  of  the  natural  life  of  man.  As  Hermann 
points  out,  the  life  in  secular  callings  was  poisoned  by  the 
church.  Men  were  compelled  to  live  in  the  secret  reproach 
that  they  had  not  chosen  the  path  of  the  perfect,  although 
it  was  open  to  them  also.  But  the  usual  ingenuity  of  the 
church  came  to  the  rescue.  The  church  announced  that 
their  kind  of  life  was  necessary  or  useful  for  the  church, 
and  that  the  perfect  kind  of  life  was  only  counseled,  not 
required.  But  this  was  a  fatal  admission.  It  could  not 
long  silence  the  reproach.  To  those  repressed  and  stunted 
Christians  the  question  must  come  home  sooner  or  later  as 
to  what  is  the  unconditionally  necessary,  not  for  the  church, 
but,  please  God,  for  their  own  selves.  If  it  is  monastic 
detachment  from  the  world  that  is  perfection,  then  the  God 
who  is  perfect,  and  who  wills  that  we  ought  to  be  perfect 
too,  does  not  merely  "counsel"  that  perfection.  It  could 
not  be  long  until  appeal  was  made  from  the  God  of  the 
monk  *who  is  a  ghost,  to  the  living  God  of  conscience  who 
is  a  reality. 

In  the  monk  the  moral  ruin  is  the  greater,  because  in  his  moral 
dream  of  perfection  his  conscience  sleeps.  In  Christian  peoples 
conscience  can  remain  alive,  but  tortured  with  uncertainty  and 
tuirest.     What  is  lacking  to  both  is  moral  obedience.^ 

The  monk  in  his  caprice  is  proud;  the  others  have  no 
certitud^. 

1  Hermann,  op.  cit.,  p.  21. 


462    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

But  Luther  did  not  attain  to  a  full  solution  of  our 
problem.  As  already  indicated,  he  was  not  aware  that  his 
new  principle  excluded  the  necessity  and  the  possibility  of 
full  discipleship  of  Jesus.  Competition  and  conflict  in  the 
world's  work  were  not,  to  his  conscious  thought,  incompat- 
ible with  rigid  obedience  to  the  precepts  of  Jesus,  with  strict 
imitation  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  Luther  did  not  solve  the 
question  which  he  precipitated,  and  the  outcome  of  the 
Reformation  at  this  point  was  not  progress,  but  regress,  even 
as  compared  with  the  Catholic  church  itself. 

Rome  was  in  possession  of  instruments  of  authoritative 
compulsion  by  means  of  which  some  adjustment  of  the 
opposites  under  review  could  be  made.  The  new  Protes- 
tantism inherited  Rome's  problem  of  both  living  in  the 
modern  world  and  obeying  the  words  of  Jesus,  but  did  not 
have  Rome's  means  to  solve  it.  The  evangelical  Christian 
was  committed  to  the  principle,  not  of  outer,  but  of  inner, 
certitude  and  stability;  not  of  authority  and  institution,  but 
of  freedom  and  personality.  But,  lacking  inner  composure 
and  strength,  yet  engaged  in  a  terrible  struggle  for  their 
very  existence,  disquieted  by  torturing  questions,  the  new 
churches  could  not  master  the  old  unresolved  antinomy; 
and,  in  their  effort  to  save  themselves  from  anarchy  and 
atomism,  they  had  recourse  to  a  confessionalism  and  a  bib- 
licism  which  were,  and  are,  but  a  sorry  copy  of  the  Catholic 
model.  They  came  to  the  conclusion  that  confessions  of 
dogmatic  certainty  would  give  stability  and  unity  to  faith. 
It  was  but  a  repetition  of  the  old  non-moral  method  of  solv- 
ing a  moral  problem.  In  addition,  they  tried  to  be  blind 
to  the  idea  that  there  were  unsolved  problems  in  the  moral 
region.  Hence  they  drew  a  veil  as  completely  as  possible  over 
the  contrast  between  the  words  of  Jesus  and  life  as  it  had  to 
be  lived  in  the  new  world.  And  it  would  not  be  far  from 
true  to  say  that  this  is  about  the  way  the  case  stands  today.* 

1  But  see  recapitulation  at  the  close  of  this  chapter. 


Jesus  463 

The  Catholics  have  had  the  advantage  over  the  Protestants, 
first,  of  the  realization  of  the  contrast  between  the  meek 
and  merciful  Jesus  and  the  craving  for  power  and  posses- 
sions; and,  secondly,  of  the  moral  value  of  the  unrest  of 
the  Christian  in  contact  with  the  world.  Protestantism 
has  split  into  two  great  streams:  pietism,  which  considers 
the  primary  duty  to  be  obedience  to  the  traditional  words  of 
Jesus;  secularism,  which  makes  subjection  to  the  order  of 
the  world  of  first  importance.  The  question  still  remains: 
Shall  we  resort  to  the  words  of  Jesus  as  the  final  court  of 
appeal  to  decide  what  the  will  of  God  concerning  us  is,  or 
shall  we  interpret  the  order  of  the  world  and  the  endowments 
of  our  own  selves  as  the  will  of  God? 

The  Reformers  had  the  right  attitude  toward  one  term  of 
the  opposition.  Their  greatness  consisted  in  the  insight  that 
the  natural  duties  of  life  in  vocation  and  society  were  the 
will  of  God,  in  the  doing  of  which  one  found  God — a  truth 
which'  they  could  not  read  in  their  Bibles.  Natural  forces 
have  given  stamp  and  direction  to  human  life ;  and  to  recog- 
nize in  them  the  will  of  the  Creator  and  Father  of  us  all,  to 
discern  that  he  is  the  godless  man  who  suffers  the  precepts 
of  any  authority,  biblical  or  ecclesiastical,  to  keep  him  from 
hearkening  to  this  revelation  of  God — it  is  this  conviction  of 
primitive  Protestants  which  constitutes  their  imperishable 
merit.  They  had  the  right  view  concerning  life  in  the 
world,  viz.,  that  participation  in  state,  family,  vocation — 
God-ordained  natural  orders — was  doing  the  will  of  God. 

d)  But  what,  then,  were  they  to  do  with  the  words  of 
Jesus?  They  did  not  know;  they  could  not  tell.  As  to 
this  term  of  the  opposition,  they  had  not  overcome  the 
Catholic  standpoint.  Must  the  Christian  hearken  to  every 
word  of  Jesus  not  expressly  directed  to  some  individual  of 
that  day,  or  must  he  do  so  only  in  case  such  a  word  in  his 
judgment  appertains  to  him  in  his  special  situation  and  call- 


464    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

ing?  It  was  inability  to  answer  this  question  that  caused 
plants  which  the  heavenly  Father  did  not  plant  to  shoot  up 
on  Protestant  soil.  But  sitppose  that  the  nse  of  the  words 
of  Jesus  led  to  such  an  end,  would  that  have  been  an  abuse 
of  them,  had  Jesus  himself  meant  that  every  man  must  fol- 
low them  blindly,  without  apprehending  their  truth? 

Jesus  never  required  that  his  words  should  be  followed 
blindly,  without  our  understanding  them.  It  was  not  the 
subjection  of  the  servile,  but  the  obedience  of  the  free,  that 
he  prized.  The  worth  of  his  words  in  his  sight  is  not  in 
their  keeping  man  in  a  state  of  nonage,  but  in  their  helping 
him  on  into  his  moral  majority  and  self-dependence.  It  is 
not  his  words  at  all  as  such,  but  the  morally  necessary,  that 
must  be  obeyed,  and  his  words  only  in  case  they  mirror  the 
morally  necessary  for  us  and  in  our  situation.  This  is  his 
will ;  and  to  obey  his  will  may  be  to  disobey  his  words. 

It  is  the  application  of  the  historico-scientific  method  to 
the  study  of  the  Bible  that  has  given  us  the  advantage  over 
the  former  generations  who  sought  to  answer  our  question. 
"We  can  appreciate  the  difference  between  Jesus'  historical 
situation  and  ours  as  they  could  not.  In  the  absence  of  the 
historical  sense,  they  could  treat  all  the  words  of  Jesus  as 
directed  to  themselves.  But  biblical  investigation  makes 
this  impossible.  -  As  we  have  seen,  Jesus  knew  nothing  of 
many  of  the  moral  and  social  tasks  w^hich  today  we  cannot 
escape.  Besides,  he  had  a  view  of  the  world  which  made 
him  indifferent  to  the  great  historical  future  of  society.  In 
his  opinion,  society  had  no  future.  In  his  opinion,  the  end 
of  the  world  was  at  hand.  Hence  to  accumulate  capital,  to 
advance  science  and  art,  to  ameliorate  economic  and  political 
conditions,  to  improve  the  tools  of  our  toil — nay,  to  fulfil  the 
first  great  commandment  to  multiply  and  replenish  the 
earth — how  could  he  feel  moral  obligation  in  any  of  these 
directions  with  his  thought  of  an  imminent  cosmic  catas- 


Jesus  465 

trophe?  His  ethics  was  "end  ethics."  But  there  was  no 
end;  and  human  relationships  to  the  world  have  necessarily 
turned  out  to  be  entirely  different  from  what  Jesus  expected. 
The  ethic  of  Jesus  was  eternity  ethic:  history  assigned  the 
Christian  the  task  of  making  peace  with  the  world  and  its 
culture.  Hence  the  great  compromise,  as  seen  in  Catholicism 
with  its  clergy  and  laity,  and  in  Protestantism  with  both  a 
pale  survival  of  the  Catholic  scheme  of  clergy  and  laity,  and 
also  the  pietism  and  secularism  already  mentioned;  the 
great  compromise  between  the  primitive  gospel  and  the  later 
world,  between  religion  and  culture,  between  "God's  cause" 
and  the  world's  business. 

And  so  it  is  Jesus'  historical  situation  and  his  appre- 
hension of  the  world  that  separate  us  from  him.  We  owe 
this  insight  to  historical  investigation.  We  are  not  con- 
fronted with  the  end  of  the  world,  but  with  an  infinitude  of 
tasks  which  the  God  of  nature  and  of  history  has  set  to  us. 
Conceiving  the  situation  as  Jesus  did,  he  acted  veraciously 
in  it;  conceiving  the  situation  as  ive  do,  it  would  be  self- 
deception  or  worse  for  us  to  act  as  he  did.  We  can  be  like 
his  character  only  by  being  unlike  his  conduct.  Veracious- 
ness  led  him  to  have  no  interest  such  as  ours  in  the  secular 
and  social  life.  Veraciousness  such  as  his  leads  us  to  a  life 
that  is  the  opposite  of  his.  Imitation  of  Jesus  ends  in  nn- 
veraciousness.  Subjection  to  his  precepts  is  separation  from 
himself.  He  who  severs  himself  from  the  world  sinks  into 
barbarism  which  is  the  definitive  secularization  of  a  human 
being;  that  is,  is  precisely  one  of  the  evils  from  which  Jesus 
would  save  man,  Jesus'  standpoint  was  as  far  removed 
from  unfree  subjection  of  the  personal  to  the  natural  as  to 
the  traditional.  In  his  situation  he  summoned  both  the 
traditional  and  the  natural  before  the  judgment  seat  of  the 
morally  necessary;  and  now  that  his  words  have  in  turn 
become   traditional,   obedience    to    his   will  requires  us   to 


466    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

apply  his  own  principle  to  his  own  words.  The  attempt  to 
imitate  Jesus  in  the  absence  of  any  moral  necessity  in  our 
situation  for  doing  so  has  long  injured  the  cause  of  Jesus ; 
and  we  should  be  grateful  that  historical  study  has  exhibited 
the  impossibility  of  such  a  work  of  supererogatioa,  and 
effected  our  emancipation  from  the  yoke  of  the  local  and 
temporal. 

But  our  separation  from  the  local  and  the  temporal  in 
Jesus  is  of  far  less  importance  than  the  deep  binding  of  our 
lives  to  the  eternally  good  that  is  in  him.  This  latter,  how- 
ever, this  inner  obedience  of  the  free  man  to  him,  scientific 
investigation  cannot  effect.  There  is  that  in  Jesus  which 
has  a  right  to  be  on  its  own  account.  It  is  not  by  scientific 
labor,  but  by  moral  intelligence,  that  we  recognize  Jesus  as 
our  Leader  still,  and  see  the  luminous  truth  of  his  words, 
which,  employed  as  rules,  separate  men  from  the  truth,  and 
therefore  from  himself.  To  know  Jesus  is  not  to  know  his 
words,  but  the  fountain  of  his  disposition  from  which  his 
words  well  up.  To  know  Jesus  is  not  to  know  his  words, 
but  to  know  the  unity  of  his  moral  thoughts  which  are  the 
creation  of  a  will  that  is  one  with  the  eternal  will.  The 
words  of  Jesus  are  not  new,  but  he  was.  He  was  moral 
personality  as  such.  And  because  he  was,  a  higher  reality 
is  disclosed  to  us  in  his  person.  Precisely  in  our  century 
of  criticism  this  fact  has  become  clearer  than  ever  before. 
The  dignity  and  worth  of  his  person  as  simple  human  moral 
personality,  as  embodiment  of  the  eternally  good,  are  incom- 
parably greater  than  that  ontological  substance  or  entity  in 
which  his  greatness  consisted  according  to  the  trinitarian 
and  christological  dogmas  of  an  unmoral  ecclesiasticism. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  serious  minds  are  no  longer  practi- 
cally concerned  with  the  forms  in  which  the  church  sought 
to  exhibit  the  worth  of  his  person;  they  gaze  upon  himself 
and  his  being  as  he  shines  in  the  gospels.     To  every  honest 


Jesus  467 

inquiring  heart  he  is  himself  the  truth  which  he  gave  to 
humanity.  He  released  the  morally  good  from  its  intricate 
combination  with  cult  and  virtuosity,  and  with  the  maze  of 
popular  tradition,  in  which  it  appeared  in  Judaism  as  in 
every  folk-religion.  He  set  forth  this  good,  not  as  the  un- 
understood  law  of  an  inscrutable  God,  but  as  a  unitary  dis- 
position of  love  and  purity,  which  makes  us  children  of  the 
Father  in  heaven,  whose  disposition  toward  us  is  the  joy  and 
strength  of  our  lives.  It  is  this  disposition,  identical  in 
Jesus  and  God,  which  uplifts  us  above  sin  and  misery,  and 
teaches  us  to  believe  that  the  guilt  of  the  lost  son  is  for- 
given, and  that  something  new  and  wonderful,  the  glory  of 
God  himself,  has  dawned  upon  the  earth. 

To  appreciate  more  fully  what  this  disposition  is,  we 
must  see  it  against  the  background  of  servility  and  heter- 
onomy  both  to  tradition  and  to  nature. 

(1)  As  to  the  former,  it  amounts  to  an  inquiry  into 
Jesus'  attitude  to  pharisaism.  What  was  the  gist  of  Jesus' 
polemic  against  the  Pharisees?  Harnack  says  that  Jesus 
preached  a  "better  righteousness."  But  the  prophets  had 
already  preached  that  better  righteousness.  "The  people 
honor  me  with  their  lips,  but  their  heart  is  far  from  me." 
"Create  in  me  a  clean  heart,  O  God."  Scrupulosity  in  the 
performance  of  cult  on  the  part  of  those  who  forgot  justice 
and  mercy  was  an  abomination  in  the  sight  of  God.  At 
best,  Jesus  but  excelled  the  righteous  among  his  people  in 
the  energy  with  which  he  urged  this  prophetic  message; 
perhaps  also  in  developing  that  message  until  its  full  con- 
tents were  exposed.  He  called  the  Pharisees  hypocrites, 
but  he  did  not  mean  by  this  that  they  were  one  thing  and 
pretended  to  be  another.  He  knew  that  they  were  not 
hypocrites  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word — those  men 
who  were  ready  to  be  slaughtered  by  Rome  in  the  interest 
of  the  inviolability  of  their  law.      Nevertheless,  so  fearful 


468    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

was  the  spiritual  ruin  of  these  men  that  he  said  they  were 
ripe  for  hell !  To  be  sure,  he  also  told  them  that  they  did 
not  do  what  they  said ;  that  they  did  not  fulfil  the  require- 
ments which  they  themselves  made.  But  they  did  not  come 
short  in  deeds  of  the  ordinary  kind;  they  were  ever  zealous 
people.  What  they  failed  in  was  a  trivial  matter  in  their 
ej^es,  for  which  they  had  no  time,  because  the  main  thing 
with  them  was  the  most  scrupulous  fulfilment  of  the  law  that 
was  at  all  possible.  To  win  a  veracious  disposition,  unified 
in  the  consciousness  of  eternal  right — they  did  not  bend 
their  energies  to  this.  They  tried  to  fulfil  the  law  indeed, 
but  that  they  might  adduce  proof  thereby  of  their  righteous- 
ness, and  attain  something  entirely  difPerent.  They  would 
serve  two  masters,  which,  in  the  opinion  of  Jesus,  is  excluded 
by  the  nature  of  the  will.  Amid  the  multiplicity  of  single 
precepts  which  they  sought  to  apprehend  as  accurately  as 
possible,  they  overlooked  right,  mercy,  faithfulness,  by 
means  of  which  a  hearty  human  fellowship  might  arise  — 
the  one  thing  which  was  the  animus  of  the  law.  They 
were  not  of  the  truth.  They  made  an  intolerable  burden 
out  of  the  law;  but  they  did  not  themselves  feel  the  burden, 
because  it  was  easy  for  them  to  do  the  unintelligible,  and 
because  they  correctly  saw  that  it  was  easily  possible  to 
reach  perfection  in  the  light  of  the  un-understood.  They 
themselves  supposed  that  they  were  well-nigh  perfect,  and 
held  that  they  were  excellent  slaves.  But  the  growth  of 
moral  thought — they  did  not  hold  it  worth  while  to  care 
about  this,  because  they  did  not  seek  the  truth.  To  fulfil 
the  law  was  their  central  concern;  but  to  win  a  veracious, 
unified,  autonomous,  inventive  disposition  of  inexhaustible 
love  was  all  in  all  to  Jesus.  And  it  was  just  such  a  will  as 
this  in  all  these  its  characteristics  that,  in  the  nature  of  the 
case,  Pharisaism  could  not  generate.  Instead  of  veracious- 
ness,  self-deception;    instead  of  unity,  divisive  and  decen- 


Jesus  469 

tralized  multiplicity;  instead  of  autonomy,  heteronomy; 
instead  of  inventiveness,  woodenness  and  mechanicalness ; 
instead  of  love,  legality — this  was  pharisaism.  To  identify 
the  precepts  of  tradition  with  the  morally  necessary,  blindly 
to  adhere  to  them,  not  to  know  that  "the  common  needs  of 
common  men,  hunger  for  food,  hunger  for  love,  hunger  for 
God,"  have  right  of  way  as  against  any  cult  or  creed,  any 
institution  or  tradition,  however  venerable  or  majestic — this 
is  the  spirit  of  pharisaism. 

The  eternal  Pharisee  !  He  still  says  that  we  must  have 
"objective"  precepts  which  specifically  tell  us  what  we 
ought  to  do.  He  still  comes  with  his  quantitative  stand- 
ards, with  his  weights  and  measures  and  figures,  into  the 
moral  world.  He  ever  multiplies  systems  of  control,  instead 
of  maturing  moral  personality  and  trusting  conscience.  He 
still  substitutes  an  atomism  of  deeds  for  continuity  of  char- 
acter, and  thus  enthrones  immoralism  in  the  center  of  the 
moral  world.  He  ever  forgets  that  a  man  can  do  the  good 
only  when,  in  obedience  to  his  own  choice,  he  follows  his 
own  knowlege  of  truth.  The  Pharisee  would  be  rio^ht  if  he 
merely  meant  that  we  need  law,  custom,  personal  authority. 
Disesteem  of  these  is  at  once  childish  and  dangerous.  But 
the  Pharisee  means  that  I  do  the  good  already  when  I  com- 
ply with  these  forces,  and,  what  is  still  worse,  that  I  come 
to  know  the  good  from  what  I  learn  from  precepts.  The 
Pharisee  says  I  have  no  eyes  of  my  own  with  which  I  can 
see  what  is  good  and  what  is  not  good;  while  the  truth  is 
that,  if  I  see  at  all,  I  must  see  with  my  own  eyes,  since  I 
have  no  others  with  which  I  can  see. 

How  did  Jesus  deal  with  the  inertness  and  unveracious- 
ness  which  underlie  this  entire  apprehension  of  the  moral? 
The  answer  to  this  question  brings  out  the  significance  of 
his  moral  thoughts  for  us. 

In  his  bitter  warfare  against   the  self-deception   of   the 


470    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

righteous  about  him,  he  made  incontestably  clear  what  it 
was  that  constituted  inner  truthfulness  and  purity  of  the 
will.  In  Jesus'  opinion,  we  can  will  only  one  thing,  accord- 
ing to  the  very  constitution  of  the  will  itself.  Try  as  we 
may,  we  cannot  serve  two  masters.  The  inner  man  sinks 
into  darkness,  if  the  will  cannot  concentrate  its  inclinations 
in  one  direction,  in  the  thought  of  an  eternal  goal. 

But,  if  we  are  to  do  this,  we  must  know  the  goal.  Did 
Jesus  think  that  it  was  his  task  to  tell  men  what  this 
goal  was?  It  does  not  appear  that  he  did.  He  knew 
that  his  people  had  the  kernel  of  the  law,  love  to  God  and 
to  neighbor,  both  together.  He  knew  that  the  knowledge 
sprang  from  every  man's  own  heart  as  to  who  his  neighbor 
was;  that  therefore  every  man  found  in  himself  a  judge  of 
his  own  unmercifulness.  What  Jesus  did,  rather,  was  to 
make  it  perfectly  clear  that  we  cannot  at  all  learn  from  any 
word  from  without  what  the  good  is,  but  must  generate  the 
unchangeable  tendency  of  our  wills  out  of  our  own  selves. 
And  the  way  he  did  this  was  to  vindicate  moral  righteous- 
ness against  piety  toward  tradition,  and  to  make  the  mean- 
ing of  love  clear. 

To  Jesus,  God  was  the  everlasting  portion  of  the  human 
sonl.  The  rule  of  God  in  us  is  our  blessedness.  To  substi- 
tute goods  for  God  means  our  moral  overthrow.  We  can 
become  free,  living,  good,  only  when  we  let  all  else  go  that 
we  may  have  God.  True  righteousness  is  love  to  God.  But 
the  Pharisees  developed  from  this  fundamental  thought  of 
piety  the  conclusion  that  we  must  hearken  above  all  else  to 
what  tradition  delivers  to  us  as  the  will  of  God.  But  to 
pursue  one's  life  in  this  way  is  to  be  defenseless  in  the 
presence  of  a  fearful  danger.  One  is  thus  betrayed  into  a 
piety  which  destroys  moral  sincerity.  Of  the  command- 
ments which  one  receives  from  tradition  one  will  accord- 
ingly value  those  as  the  most  important  which  tell  one  how 


Jesus  471 

one  should  directly  relate  one's  self  to  God.  Jesus  saw  that 
this  was  so  in  the  case  of  the  zealous,  righteous  people 
about  him.  They  went  to  ever  greater  pains  to  develop  to 
their  full  consequences  the  traditional  precepts  concerning 
the  service  of  God.  In  the  righteousness  of  such  service 
Jesus  saw  the  decay  of  living  morality,  the  carcass  about 
which  the  eagles  gathered.  Jesus  was  absolutely  opposed 
to  the  subordination  of  the  common  needs  of  common  men 
to  the  requirements  of  cult.  He  witnessed  the  bloom  of  a 
religion  that  would  live  on  the  death  of  the  moral.  And  he 
showed  how  the  evil  could  be  overcome.  If  a  tradition  pur- 
porting to  come  from  God  is  expected  to  acquaint  us  with 
what  is  good  and  what  is  not,  religion  preponderates  over 
moral  disposition.  We  are  protected  from  this  evil  when 
we  see  that  moral  earnestness,  veraciousness  of  willing, 
is  the  beginning  of  religion,  in  which  the  living  God  is 
truly  sought.  Living  the  moral  life  is  the  way  to  the  reality 
for  which  religion  stands.  Jesus  saw  in  moral  knowledge 
an  original  element  in  all  real  religion.  It  is  impossible  for 
the  soul  to  yearn  after  God  himself,  if  it  does  not  know 
what  the  good  is.  For  God  is  good.  If  we  are  to  find  God 
and  follow  him,  we  must  know  the  good.  Jesus  fought  the 
error  that  we  must  first  know  God  and  understand  his  com- 
mandments in  order  to  know  the  good.  He  held  that  man 
of  his  own  self  could  judge  as  to  what  was  right.  He  told 
even  Pharisees  that  they  could. 

If  we  turn  now  to  his  interpretation  of  the  commandment 
of  love,  we  find  Jesus  unfolding  the  same  moral  thought. 
He  makes  clear  what  the  disposition  of  love  is.  The  goal 
of  love  is  that  personal  fellowship  in  which  each  has  joy  in 
all,  for  which  each  would  willingly  sacrifice  everything 
else.  To  originate  and  deepen  such  fellowship  is  the 
unchangeable  and  eternal  will  of  love.  The  will  of  love  can 
will  nothing  else.     To   love  one's  enemy,  therefore,  is  not 


472    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

an  exceptional  accomplishment,  which  one  may  admire,  but 
not  understand;  certainly  not  a  moral  abnormality  which  is 
repellent,  but  a  vivid  example  of  the  will  that  wills  nothing 
but  personal  fellowship.  If  enmity  could  set  limits  to  love, 
love  would  be  limited  from  without  and  unfree.  On  reflec- 
tion, one  sees  that  it  thus  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of  love 
to  love  one's  enemies. 

Again,  love  does  not  wait  upon,  is  not  guided  by,  pre- 
cepts. Real  love  gives  precepts  to  itself.  The  relation  of 
love  is  determined  from  within,  not  from  without.  Love 
does  not  have  to  be  told  that  its  goal  is  fellowship;  it  knows 
this  of  itself.  The  best  way  to  this  goal  is  the  only  way 
that  love  knows.  Whither  love  goes,  and  the  way  it  goes, 
is  not  determined  by  any  precepts  whatsoever;  otherwise  its 
free  confidence  is  overpowered  by  fear  or  its  energy  resolved 
into  inertness.  The  veracious  self-dependence  of  love  as  the 
kernel  and  star  of  the  moral  life — this  is  the  innermost 
meaning  and  message  of  the  Master.  Willing  as  the  heroic 
Pharisee  was  to  suffer  martyrdom  for  his  "faith,"  in  the 
absence  of  this  love  he  was  nothing.  It  is  not  in  obedience 
to  precepts,  not  even  the  precepts  of  Jesus,  that  the  love  of 
which  Jesus  thinks  has  either  origin  or  goal  or  method. 
The  love  that  he  requires  may  violate  his  precepts,  and  the 
hate  that  he  disallows  keep  them. 

It  is  not  precepts,  it  is  love,  that  kindles  love,  the  love  in 
one  man  becoming  the  temporal  beginning  of  love  in  another 
man.  It  is  when  love  does  begin  that  man  has  life  in  him- 
self. Once  arisen,  love  functions  of  itself.  Love  does  not 
receive  laws;  on  the  basis  of  its  own  apprehension  it  gives 
itself  laws.  Love  does  not  depend  upon  lovableness,  but 
unrolls  and  irradiates  its  inner  wealth,  like  God's  sun.  It 
has  the  sublime  composure  of  creative  power;  it  has  divine 
genius  and  authority.  It  is  this  love,  and  this  alone,  that 
Jesus  says  is  required  of  men.     Men  could  keep  no  sabbath, 


Jesus  473 

observe  no  fast  or  rite  or  ceremony,  cherish  no  custom  or 
cult,  confess  no  creed,  obey  no  precept,  revere  no  tradition; 
but  love,  fontal,  autonomous,  adaptive,  never-failing — this 
they  must  have  or  perish.  In  the  opinion  of  Jesus,  it  is 
precisely  the  rise  in  man  of  this  free  power  of  love  that  is 
man's  redemption. 

And  love  is  never  ended  and  never  complete.  No  moral 
task  ever  is.  To  know  only  limited  tasks  is  not  to  have 
attained  the  inner  vitality  and  freedom  of  the  moral  disposi- 
tion. It  belongs  to  the  nature  of  love  that  the  fulfilment  of 
one  task  but  makes  a  new  and  greater  task  possible.  A  will 
that  sets  bounds  to  its  endeavor  for  fellowship  with  men  has 
no  moral  character.  The  generation — i.  e.,  choice — of 
hearty  fellowship  with  others  as  our  only  goal  involves  the 
recognition  in  us  of  unlimited  capacity  to  work  toward  such 
a  goal.  If  we  have  real  love,  we  shall  recognize  that  we 
have  no  right  to  all  our  rights,  that  all  is  not  ours  to  use 
which  is  ours  legitimately  to  own.  To  do  its  work  and  reach 
its  goal,  love  will  be  ready  to  sacrifice  everything  but  itself. 
This  is  the  self-denial  that  Jesus  requires — not  a  senseless 
throwing  away  of  one's  own  powers,  but  their  utmost  tension, 
their  entire  concentration  upon  the  great  cause. 

(2)  Bvit  in  these  last  remarks  we  have  already  transcended 
the  thought  of  Jesus  as  to  the  relation  of  moral  personality 
to  the  precepts  of  tradition,  and  encroached  upon  its  relation 
to  the  natural.  According  to  Jesus,  the  self-dependence  of 
the  inner  life  is  to  be  maintained  against  the  latter,  no  less 
than  against  the  former.  Pleasure  and  pain,  appetite  and 
passion,  enjoyment  and  sorrow — these  are  not  ends;  they 
are  but  so  much  raw-material  at  the  disposal  of  the  self,  as 
it  organizes  and  matures  moral  personality,  whose  essence  is 
love.  Jesus  requires  spiritual  discipline  which  endures  no 
residue  of  the  merely  sensual,  but  absolutely  subordinates  all 
that  is  sensual  as  means  to  ends  of  spirit.     More  especially, 


474    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

he  has  no  thought  of  compassing  this  moral  task  as  an 
external  work ;  it  is  done  from  within,  out  of  the  disposition 
itself,  as  a  satisfaction  of  one's  own  willing  and  craving. 
This  triumphing  of  the  inner  life  over  these  lords  in  the 
kingdom  of  the  world,  by  converting  them  into  servants  of 
moral  personality;  this  remainderless  ethicization  of  the 
pre-ethical  and  sub-ethical  power  of  human  nature — this  is 
an  inalienable  element  of  the  moral  thought  of  Jesus.  From 
natural,  sensible  determinateness  to  ripen  to  full  spiritual 
moral  personality;  from  natural,  sensible  fellowship  to  grow 
into  a  kingdom  of  spirits  which  has  abiding  worth,  sub 
specie  aeternitatis — this  is  the  meaning  of  life  according  to 
the  thought  of  Jesus.  And  Jesus  himself,  though  he  came 
eating  and  drinking,  and  was  called  a  wine-bibber  and  a 
glutton,  was  yet  inwardly  free  from  the  lust  of  the  flesh, 
the  lust  of  the  eye,  and  the  pride  of  life.  He  would  lead 
his  disciples  to  this  freedom — a  freedom  which  had  not  yet 
dawned  upon  the  thought  of  his  forerunner.  And  this  free- 
dom reposed  upon  a  seriousness  to  which  the  strenuousness 
of  the  Baptist  had  not  attained — a  seriousness  which  did 
not  manifest  itself  by  wearing  a  cloak  of  camel's  hair  and 
eating  locusts  and  wild  honey,  but  by  losing  the  life  to  save 
it,  by  plucking  out  the  right  eye  and  cutting  off  the  right 
hand,  by  going  through  life  maimed  rather  than  losing  soul 
and  body  in  hell !  That  these  words  are  not  a  demand  for 
outward  works  is  evident  from  his  doctrine  of  repentance 
which  called  for  a  change  of  the  disposition  itself.  He  ever 
pressed  behind  the  single  deed  to  the  disposition:  Make  the 
tree  good  and  the  fruit  will  be  good.  Out  of  the  heart  come 
the  pure  thoughts  which  will  purify  the  man. 

But  enough  has  been  said  to  indicate  the  center  of  the 
moral  thought  of  Jesus.  It  is  the  unity,  the  wholeness,  the 
internality,  and  freedom  of  a  personality,  whose  content  is 
moral  love.     It  was  this  which  he  defended,  at  the  cost  of 


Jesus  475 

his  life,  against  the  pharisaic  and  the  pagan  ethic  of  the 
"natural  man."  His  ethic  was  an  ethic,  not  of  the  "situa- 
tion," not  of  "environment"  not  of  the  socius,  but  of  a 
tense  ethical  individualism;^  and  it  is  diametrically  opposed 
to  that  modern  ethic  which  makes  happiness  the  formal  con- 
stituent of  virtue,  and  seeks  to  deduce  the  laws  of  conduct 
from  the  laws  of  comfort;  which  insists  that  not  the  inten- 
tion of  the  doer,  but  the  result  of  the  deed,  is  the  test  of 
the  ethical  value  of  an  act;  which,  reducing  the  moral  law 
to  impotence  by  depriving  it  of  its  distinctive  characteristic, 
necessity,  degrades  it  to  a  matter  of  latitude  and  longitude, 
temperature  and  cuisine;  which  robs  it  of  its  essential 
sanction,  the  punishment  inseparably  bound  up  with  its 
violation,  and  denies  the  organic  instinct  of  conscience  that 
retribution  must  follow  upon  evil-doing. 

But,  in  the  light  of  this  long  exposition,  we  may  now 
return  to  the  problem  of  obedience  to  the  precepts  of  Jesus 
on  the  part  of  the  bearers  of  modern  civilized  life.  The 
formulation  of  a  few  propositions  must  suffice. 

First:  Love,  or  the  will  directed  to  the  fellowship  of 
autonomous  beings,  is  the  disposition,  of  which  Jesus  is 
archetype,  and  which  alone  is  good.  According  to  his  inter- 
pretation of  love,  this  disposition  is  a  unitary,  self-dependent, 
inexhaustible  will.  It  is  in  the  light  of  this  thought  that 
we  must  approach  those  words  of  Jesus  which  seem  to 
divorce  us  from  our  morally  necessary  social  tasks,  from  our 
striving  after  possessions  and  power.  It  is  an  error  to 
borrow  the  moral  thoughts  of  Jesus  from  such  words.  We 
must  seek  his  moral  thoughts  in  the  unity  of  his  disposition. 
The  question  should  then  be  raised:  How  are  such  single 
words  to  be  understood  on  the  basis  of  his  disposition,  and 
of  the  special  situation  in  which  it  was  his  lot  to  live? 

iThis  is  corroborated  by  the  way  in  which  he  puts  the  individual  naked  and 
alone  before  God's  judgment  throne. 


476    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

Second:  Careful  account  must  be  taken  of  the  special 
situation  in  which  the  words  were  spoken.  Must  the  key 
to  the  words  of  Jesus  which  transgress  the  customary  mode 
of  thought  of  man  be  found  in  Jesus'  expectation  of  the 
speedy  end  of  the  world?  Not  entirely,  great  as  was  this 
influence  upon  him.  The  words  of  Jesus  receive  their 
peculiar  tone  from  their  being  directed  to  an  eternal  goal, 
on  which  account  all  that  intervenes  between  the  individual 
and  that  goal  can  be  only  relatively  and  limitedly  willed. 

Third:  The  most  common  and  injurious  misconception 
in  the  explanation  of  those  words  is  to  treat  them  as  laws 
which  ought  to  be  fulfilled  in  every  instance  and  under  all 
circumstances.  This  is  an  impossibility.  The  all-important 
fact  is  that  they  are  not  a  necessary  expression  in  all  space 
and  time  of  the  disposition  of  Jesus.  They  are  not  what 
such  a  disposition  must  organically  and  unchangeably  will. 
The  character  of  his  own  intercourse  with  men  testifies  that 
he  had  no  thought  of  paralyzing  human  energies,  sealing 
the  fountain  of  natural  human  joys,  and  despoiling  his  sur- 
roundings for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  If  he 
had  meant  those  words  to  be  universal  rules,  he  would  have 
been  much  worse  than  the  lawgivers  he  combated.  Such  an 
apprehension  of  his  words  is  possible  only  for  those  —  and 
their  name  is  legion  —  who  care  more  for  his  words  than 
they  do  for  himself.  They  present  the  sorry  spectacle  of  a 
harsh  opposition  to  that  very  moral  knowledge  which  Jesus 
possessed,  and  to  which  he  would  win  others. 

Fourth:  What  is  the  moral  method  to  which  the  disposi- 
tion of  Jesus  points?  We  follow  Jesus,  not  when  we  obey 
his  words,  but  when  we  are  like-minded  with  him ;  when  we, 
on  the  basis  of  this  disposition,  and  as  autonomously  as  he 
in  our  bearing  toward  the  traditional  and  the  natural,  seek 
the  path  to  the  eternal  goal  from  the  standpoint  of  our  own 
situation   and  endowment.      But    if    we   would  follow  any 


Jesus  477 

words  whatsoever  solely  because  they  are  handed  down  as 
the  words  of  Jesus,  although  we  do  not  find  his  disposition, 
therefore  himself,  in  them,  and  although  we  do  not  under- 
stand them  as  true,  then  we  thereby  offer  resistance  to  this 
Man  who  would  bind  us  to  himself  in  order  to  save  us  from 
the  darkness  of  self-deception.  This  false  obedience  to  the 
words  of  Jesus  comes  under  the  head  of  what  was  once 
spoken  of  as  salvation  by  works.  But  the  love  which  is  self- 
dependent,  inventive,  ready  to  sacrifice,  is  not  the  product 
of  the  isolated  individual,  but  is  kindled  in  him,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  only  persons  that  save  persons.  It  is  this  love  that 
we  understand  to  be  morally  necessary.  And  we  condemn 
ourselves  when  we  detect  that  we  lack  it.  To  substitute 
obedience  to  the  words  of  Jesas  for  the  possession  of  this 
love  is  a  pharisaic  makeshift  on  the  part  of  those  who  find 
servility  to  law  an  easier  way  of  salvation  than  the  freedom 
of  love.  But  it  is  precisely  the  strenuous  effort  involved  in 
obeying  precepts  that  is  so  attractive  to  these  people,  proud 
of  their  strength.  They  fail  to  see  that  it  was  in  a  love 
ready  for  any  sacrifice  that  the  total  energy  of  the  soul  of 
Jesus  was  exhausted. 

Fifth:  Are,  then,  these  words  of  Jesus  worthless?  Far 
from  it.  They  are  themselves  glorious  witness  of  inner 
freedom  and  power.  It  is  precisely  through  these  words  and 
through  the  bearing  of  Jesus  toward  the  speedy  end  of  the 
world  that  his  energy  is  imveiled.  He  fulfils  everything 
which  flows  from  his  conviction,  as  that  which  is  self-evident, 
and  requires  the  same  thing  of  his  disciples.  Modern  Chris- 
tians think  that  they  are  obliged  to  share  the  eschatological 
mood  and  conviction  of  Jesus,  and  yet  they  guard  against 
treating;  the  thino^s  of  this  world  as  indifferent  and  futureless ! 
This  is,  to  say  the  least,  intellectual  confusion.  Jesus  acted 
according  to  his  conviction — such  modern  Christians  have  no 
convictions  according  to  their  acts.     The  truth  is  that  we  do 


478    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

not  have  the  same  world-view  that  Jesus  had,  that  we  there- 
fore live  in  a  different  world.  But  the  disposition  which 
Jesus  had  in  his  world  we  should  have  in  ours,  namely,  the 
will  to  follow,  as  really  as  he  did,  our  own  convictions  in  our 
own  conduct.  Only  such  acts  are  veracious  as  grow  from 
the  agent's  own  will.  Whoever,  like  Jesus,  presses  on  to  a 
veracious  and  loving  act,  must  wage  war  against  the  con- 
venience which  would  receive  sufficient  guidance  from  what 
others  say.  Man  cannot  be  brought  to  moral  conduct  by  a 
sum  of  precepts  which  limit  his  autonomy.  Jesus  therefore 
made  free  path  for  moral  disposition. 

Sixth :  From  the  finality  and  supremacy  of  the  moral  dis- 
position of  the  individual  in  the  ethical  thoughts  of  Jesus, 
it  follows  that,  after  all,  the  goods  of  civilized  life — family, 
vocation,  state,  science  and  the  like — are  only  relative  values. 
It  cannot  be  too  earnestly  asseverated  that  this  conviction  is 
integral  in  the  thought  of  Jesus  and  inalienable  in  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  Only  persons,  no  other  form  or  content  of 
human  society,  have  absolute  value.  The  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity, as  long  as  it  remains  true  to  itself  and  like  the  spirit 
of  Jesus,  is  a  spirit  which  remains  indifferent  to  secular 
tasks  and  interests  as  such,  but  which  is  directed  solely  to 
the  last  and  highest  good  of  personality,  fellowship  of  love 
with  man  and  with  the  holy  God.  Heart  purity  which  can 
stand  before  God  in  judgment,  and  love  which  does  deeds 
that  are  merciful  and  unmerited,  helpful  and  needful,  to  the 
brothers  for  God's  sake,  even  as  such  deeds  are  experienced 
from  God — these  are  the  basic  thoughts  of  Christian  ethics, 
the  content  of  the  individual  and  social  ethics  of  Christianity. 
To  walk  in  the  lijjht  of  the  Eternal  and  before  the  face  of  God, 
undisturbed  by  divisive  and  bewildering  impulses  in  the 
world  enmeshed  in  sensible  goods  and  interests — this  is  the 
heart  of  genuine  Christianity.  And  the  Christian  must  not 
forget  that  the  products  of  his  labor  in  industry,  in  science. 


Jesus  479 

in  art,  in  the  state,  open  a  gulf  which  threatens  to  devour  his 
future.  There  is  redemption  for  his  personal  life  only  when 
his  moral  knowledge  transports  him  above  all  this  glory.  It 
is  all  over  with  Christianity  when  this  strong  tendency  to 
the  personal,  the  supramundane,  which  after  all  was  the 
kernel  of  the  eschatology  of  Jesus,  is  paralyzed  and  atro- 
phied. It  is  one  of  the  difficult  questions  of  today  whether 
we  can  maintain  this  principle  of  the  Christian  life,  once 
thought  of  as  unassailable,  unconquerable,  all-illumining, 
against  that  revolution  in  the  modern  world  to  which  Chris- 
tian ethics  seems  questionable,  imperfect,  and  positively 
dangerous.  The  truth  is  that  that  very  spirit  and  disposi- 
tion of  Jesus  which,  after  all,  made  modern  culture  possible, 
because  it  made  the  modern  man  possible,  must  ever  turn 
around  and  save  us  from  that  culture;  otherwise  personal 
life  will  decay,  if  not  through  its  toil,  at  least  through  the 
luxuriance  of  the  products  of  its  toil  which  smother  con- 
science and  eclipse  the  countenance  of  God.'  And  while 
it  may  be  true  that  moral  light  falls  upon  a  wider  area  of 
life  in  the  present  than  was  the  case  with  Jesus,  still  not 
only  was  his  moral  power  to  live  according  to  the  light 
greater  than  ours,  but  it  is  only  as  we  are  ourselves  organized 
and  energized  by  that  power  which,  in  him,  was  sufficient 
for  the  complete  extensive  and  intensive  ethicization  of  his 
nature,  that  we  can  create  for  ourselves  free  personalities, 
whose  content  is  love,  in  the  use  of  the  material  that  both 
the  traditional  and  the  natural  place  at  our  disposal. 

1  Culture,  art,  and  science  may  be  very  undeveloped  beside  high  piety,  highly 
developed  beside  a  low  state  of  religion.  It  lies  in  the  nature  of  religion  that  all 
energetic  piety,  conscious  of  possessing  the  one  thing  needful,  must  be  inclined  to 
face  these  interests,  when  they  make  claim  to  satisfy  the  soul,  with  a  certain  hos- 
tility, and  that  every  genuine  religion  in  its  earliest  realization  is  indifferent  to 
them.  A  highly  developed  society  easily  seduces  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  one 
thing  needful  can  be  neither  art  nor  science  nor  wealth,  but  the  perfect  moral  fel- 
lowship born  of  the  love  of  God.  For  Christianity,  the  moral  alone  is  the  decisive 
factor  in  judging  the  value  of  human  life.  The  Christian  can  be  ''  happy,"  even 
when  the  goods  of  culture  and  of  wealth  are  denied  him. 


480    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

5.  We  are  searching  for  the  abiding  importance  of  the 
person  of  Jesus  and  for  the  permanent  element  in  his  teach- 
ing. We  have  seen  that  it  was  not  belief  in  angels,  in  spirits, 
and  in  the  hereafter  that  constituted  his  peculiarity  and  his 
power.  It  was  not  his  working  of  miracles,  nor  his  belief  in 
demons;  he  knew  that  he  was  not  sent  to  do  miracles,  and 
his  belief  in  demons  he  shared  with  his  times.  Besides, 
there  were  casters-out  of  demons  enough  before  and  since 
his  day.  Nor  was  the  annunciation  of  the  speedy  coming  of 
the  kingdom  of  God  peculiar  to  him;  it  had  already  been 
made  by  the  Baptist,  and  had  long  been  the  thought  of 
Pharisees  and  Zealots.  Certainly,  the  claim  to  be  the 
Messiah  does  not  constitute  his  peculiarity.  Apart  from 
the  debatable  question  whether  he  claimed  for  himself  on 
earth  the  title  of  Messiah,  there  is  the  further  question  as 
to  the  special  character  of  his  messianic  idea,  and  the  kind 
of  Messiah  he  wanted  to  be — not  the  folk-Messiah  cer- 
tainly, for  it  was  precisely  this  Messiah  that  was  the  "devil" 
in  the  temptation  stories.  Nor  does  the  claim  to  be  the  incar- 
nate God  on  earth  amount  to  a  peculiarity;  others  subse- 
quently made  it  for  Jesus;  Jesus  never  made  it  for  himself, 
and  would  not  have  understood  what  was  meant  by  it.  Indeed, 
if  the  oldest  sources  are  to  be  trusted,  Jesus  said  nothing 
even  as  to  his  pretemporal  existence  with  God,  or  of  his  return 
to  heaven.  Finally,  as  we  have  also  shown,  his  moral  pre- 
cepts are  not  universally  valid.  Some  of  them  were  applicable 
only  to  his  own  time  and  place ;  perhaps  more  narrowly  still, 
to  the  mode  of  life  of  his  immediate  disciples.  Nor  were  his 
moral  ideas,  taken  distributively,  new.  What  then?  He 
was  new,  and  his  power  to  make  men  new  was  new  likewise. 
And  the  unity,  wholeness,  spirituality,  and  simplicity  of  his 
moral  thoughts,  as  well  as  the  freshness,  liveliness,  and  beauty 
of  their  presentation,  were  new,  although  the  opinion  to  the 
contrary  of  certain  modern  Jewish  scholars  of  superior  char- 


Jesus  481 

acter  and  learning  must  be  respected.  What  was  certainly 
new  was  the  disposition  and  self-consciousness  of  Jesus. 
From  these  there  gradually  sprang  up  in  his  soul  a  value- 
judgment  that  was  new  also,  namely,  that  not  things,  not 
even  sacred  things,  but  that  persons  only,  are  worthful. 
Faith  in  the  infinite  worth  of  the  human  personality  in  the 
sight  of  God — if  there  was  anything  new  in  the  thought  of 
Jesus,  it  was  this.  Jesus  felt  the  worth  of  man  as  man,  and 
dared  to  hope  that  man  could  become  the  home  of  the  moral 
values  and  the  religious  blessedness  which  he  felt  in  himself. 
He  cherished  this  hope  for  publicans  and  harlots,  for  out- 
casts and  prodigals,  for  Samaritans  and  gentiles,  for  his 
enemies,  and  especially  for  children,  in  whom  he  experienced 
the  true  essence  of  man.  With  this  general  position  a  dis- 
tinguished Jewish  scholar  agrees,  as  may  be  seen  from  the 
following : 

The  rabbis  and  the  rabbinic  religion  are  keen  on  repentance, 
which  in  their  eyes  is  second  only  to  the  law;  but  we  do  not,  I 
think,  find  the  same  passionate  eagerness  to  cause  repentance,  to 
save  the  lost,  to  redeem  the  sinner.  The  refusal  to  allow  that  any 
human  soul  is  not  capable  of  emancipation  from  the  bondage  of 
sin,  the  labor  of  pity  and  love  among  the  outcast  and  the  fallen, 
go  back  to  the  synoptic  gospels  and  their  hero.  They  were  hardly 
known  before  his  time.  And  the  redemptive  method  which  he 
inaugurated  was  new  likewise.  It  was  the  method  of  pity  and  love. 
There  is  no  paltering  with  sin;  it  is  not  made  less  odious;  but 
instead  of  mere  threats  and  condemnations,  the  chance  is  given  for 
hope,  admiration,  and  love  to  work  their  wonders  within  the  sinner's 
soul.  The  sinner  is  afforded  the  ojoportuuity  of  doing  good  instead 
of  evil,  and  his  kindly  services  are  encouraged  and  praised.  Jesus 
seems  to  have  had  a  special  insight  into  the  nature  of  certain  kinds 
of  sin,  and  into  the  redeemable  capacity  of  certain  kinds  of  sinners. 
He  perceived  that  there  was  a  certain  untainted  humility  of  soul 
which  some  sins  in  some  sinners  had  not  yet  destroyed,  just  as  he 
also  believed  and  realized  that  there  was  a  certain  cold,  formal, 
negative  virtue  which  was  practically  equivalent  to  sin,  and  far  less 
capable  of  reformation.     Overzealous  scrupulosity,  and  the  pride 


482    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

which,  dwelling  with  smug  satisfaction  upon  its  own  excellence, 
draws  away  the  skirts  from  any  contact  with  impurity,  were  espe- 
cially repugnant  to  him.  Whether  with  this  sin  and  with  its  sinners 
he  showed  adequate  patience  may  perhaps  be  doubted,  but  it  does 
seem  to  me  that  his  denunciation  of  formalism  and  pride,  his  con- 
trasted pictui"es  of  the  lowly  publican  and  the  scrupulous  Pharisee, 
were  new  and  permanent  contributions  to  morality.^ 

1  C.  G.  MONTEFIOEE,  in  Hibbert  Journal,  July,  1905,  pp.  665,  666.  Montefiore's 
reference  to  the  harshness  of  Jesus'  treatment  of  his  enemies  leads  us  to  wonder 
whether  Jesus  both  prayed,  "Father,  forgive  them,"  and  also  called  them  serpents 
and  vipers  and  children  of  hell,  and  "  anticipated,  at  least  without  regret,  and 
apparently  with  satisfaction,  their  everlasting  destruction  and  pain"  (p.  659).  This 
quotation  seems  a  bit  overdrawn.  For  the  rest,  to  criticise  thus  the  denunciations 
of  Jesus  is  to  find  fault  with  the  prophetic  temperament  as  such;  to  make  no  allow- 
ance for  orientalism  in  the  use  of  figures  of  speech ;  and  to  neglect  to  explain  how 
otherwise  the  tremendous  moral  earnestness  of  Jesus  could  adequately  express  itself, 
and  the  sinners  be  brought  to  repentance.  Besides,  may  not  what  Jesus  said  have 
been  true  1  Still,  I  do  not  wish  to  seem  to  deny  that  there  are  difficulties  here,  both 
historical  and  moral.  One  thing  seems  clear,  however :  Not  alone  our  human  affec- 
tion for  Jesus,  but  his  own  moral  merit  as  well,  are  excluded  by  the  ecclesiastical 
conception  of  his  sinlessness.  Such  a  wooden  conception  of  his  abstract,  bare  sin- 
lessness  would  be  abandoned,  did  not  one  need  it  in  order  to  establish,  with  Anselm, 
the  possibility  of  a  spotless  "  satisfaction  "  to  God.  Jesus  confronts  us  as  knowing 
what  sin  was— knowing,  too,  not  from  divine  omniscience.  It  is  simply  sanctimo- 
nious superficiality  to  spirit  away  his  words :  "  Why  callest  thou  me  good?  One  is 
good,  God  alone."  His  temptation  was  no  isolated  episode  in  his  life;  the  story  is 
symbolic  of  his  development.  Jesus  had  a  hard  fight  with  sin.  No  development  is 
a  human  development  without  this  fight.  Still,  there  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
any  breach  with  his  past.  He  was  no  penitent,  such  as  Paul,  or  Jonathan  Edwards. 
And  the  impression  of  his  purity  of  heart  and  moral  elevation  is  overmastering  to 
this  day.  His  development  to  purity  and  to  consummate  goodness  ought  not  to  be 
considered  by  us  as  unhuman  because  incomprehensible.  Think,  analogously,  of  the 
difference  between  the  musical  genius  of  a  Beethoven  and  the  mediocre  endowment 
of  most  men  1  Would  it  increase  our  love  for  Beethoven,  or  serve  the  cause  of  music, 
to  excogitate  the  formula  that  he  had  no  ups  and  downs  in  his  musical  development, 
that  his  music  was  so  much  a  gift  that  it  was  no  task  also?  And  do  we  say  that  his 
genius  was  unhuman  and  impossible,  because  we  cannot  fathom  it?  In  what  region 
can  we  fathom  the  profundity  of  genial  personalities?  It  is  often  said  that  Jesus' 
call  to  repentance  and  denunciation  of  sin  presupposes  his  sinlessness.  I  do  not  wish 
to  deny  it;  but  if  Beethoven  should  hear  our  ''rag-time"  music,  would  he  not  cry 
with  fiery  indignation :  "  Except  ye  repent,  ye  shall  all  likewise  perish?"  and  would 
such  a  cry  prove  his  musical  flawlessness  ?  Others  tell  us  that  even  transient  moral 
obscurations  and  weaknesses  at  the  period  of  growth  must  necessarily  have  left 
permanent  scars  on  the  conscience  and  have  hindered  him  from  subsequent  prophetic 
tasks.  But  this  position  is  psychologically  wholly  false.  Furthermore,  was  it 
impossible  for  Jesus  to  say  the  Lord's  Prayer  with  his  disciples  without  expressly 
omitting  the  a(j>e?  ?  "  Still,  I  do  not  wish  to  seem  dogmatic,  and  I  bow  before  Jesus 
as  the  best  we  know.  I  simply  wish  to  avoid  any  look  of  a  doketic  view  of  the  his- 
torical Jesus;  also,  to  recognize  that  the  idea  of  the  absolute  sinlessness  of  Jesus  is 
no  result  of  historical  study.  The  sources  are  too  meager,  and  the  question  leads 
into  those  depths  of  the  inner  life  which  no  historical  observation  penetrates. 


Jesus  483 

We  indicated  above  that  it  was  on  the  basis  of  Jesus'  own 
worth  and  worthiness  that  he  had  faith  in  the  worth  of  man 
as  man.  How  else  could  such  faith  be  accounted  for?  The 
people  whom  he  saw  were  little  suited  to  inspire  such  faith. 
He  saw  men  murdered  and  mowed  down  like  grass,  and 
treated  worse  than  one  treats  oxen  that  fall  into  the  ditch. 
Nor  did  Jesus  indulge  a  weak  feeling  of  Buddhistic  pity  for 
poor  humanity,  nor  was  the  idea  of  "the  universal  brother- 
hood of  man"  known  to  him.  He  set  out  from  a  reality  of 
which  he  was  immediately  aware.  With  all  his  reverence 
before  God,  whose  throne  was  heaven  and  whose  footstool 
was  the  earth,  with  high  regard  for  the  greatness  of  his 
people,  for  Moses  and  the  prophets,  for  the  Baptist,  whom  he 
called  the  greatest  of  them  that  were  born  of  woman,  he  yet 
felt  the  dignity  of  his  own  personality,  and  therewith  the 
worth  of  human  personality  in  general.  It  was  the  worth  of 
man  as  such  which  had  come  to  be  appreciated  by  him,  and 
by  him  alone — any  man  being  worth  more  than  all  the  world 
besides.  His  own  inner  nobility  was  the  source  of  his  value- 
judgment —  a  value- judgment  which  is  a  proof  that  he  did 
not  consider  his  own  nature  to  be  different  in  essence  from 
that  of  other  men.  The  ecclesiastical  affirmation  of  this  dif- 
ference is  the  logical  negation  of  the  gospel.  He  believed 
in  the  hid  treasure  in  the  field,  because  he  himself  bore  a 
rich  treasure  in  his  own  bosom.  He  knew  that  God  was  the 
Father  of  man,  because  he  knew  that  he  was  himself  a  Son  of 
the  Father.  To  awaken  in  others  the  slumbering  conscious- 
ness of  the  nearness  of  God,  of  kinship  with  God,  the  sense 
of  the  membership  of  men  one  with  another,  the  pjrivilege 
and  possibility  of  the  noble  kind  of  thought,  feeling,  and 
willing  of  which  he  was  conscious  in  himself — this  was  his 
peculiar  task. 

But  do  the  presuppositions  and  conditions  for  the  success 
of  this  task  exist?     Are  the  structure  and  function  of  the 


484    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

universe  such  as  to  indicate  that  their  chief  end  is  the 
origination  and  consummation  and  conservation  of  moral  per- 
sonality ?  Is  the  Will  that  is  in  at  the  heart  of  things  like- 
minded  with  Jesus  in  this  matter?  This  is  the  religious 
question  as  the  modern  man  would  frame  it.  For  Jesus  it 
would  simply  be  the  question  as  to  the  character  and  end  of 
God.  It  is  Jesus'  thought  upon  this  subject  to  which  we 
should  now  turn.  Who  was  Jesus'  God,  and  what  was 
Jesus'  attitude  of  mind  toward  him  ? 

a)  The  reality  of  God  seems  to  have  been  an  immediate 
certainty  to  Jesus.  His  certainty  was  not  grounded  in  the 
authority  of  tradition.  To  have  God  simply  through  the 
recollection  of  others,  or  through  one's  own  recollection,  is 
to  forget  God.  Nor  was  God  an  object  of  human  inquiry 
and  investigation  to  Jesus.  He  excogitated  no  theistic 
argument,  as  also  he  elaborated  no  psychology  of  the  divine 
mind.  The  basis  of  his  conviction  of  the  existence  of  God 
was  practical  and  experiential,  rather  than  authoritative  or 
speculative.  To  be  sure,  God  was  a  reality  to  the  fellow- 
countrymen  of  Jesus  also.  But  to  them  the  counterpart  of 
this  reality  was  the  reality  of  their  national  life  and  dominion. 
Faith  in  the  former  could  not  abide  without  faith  in  the 
latter.  But  the  people  were  broken,  scattered,  bleeding. 
Hence  faith  in  the  corresponding  reality  of  God  grew  uncer- 
tain, distressed,  joyless.  Their  sense  of  the  worth  of  God 
ebbed  and  flowed  with  the  sense  of  their  own  worth  and  the 
evidence  of  their  own  dignity.  But  for  Jesus,  God  was  a 
reality  independently  of  the  fate  and  future  of  the  nation  as 
such.  His  faith  in  God  was  not  dependent  upon  his  faith  in 
the  national  existence  and  hopes,  but  upon  the  worthiness  of 
his  own  personality  and  the  worth  of  man,  since  faith  in  God 
combines  both  faith  in  man  and  work  at  the  perfection  of 
personality.  It  was  because  God  was  to  him  a  reality  far 
transcending  all  else,  even  his  faith  and  thought  as  regards 


Jesus  485 

his  people,  that  he  was  in  a  position  to  exalt  the  preaching 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  into  a  higher  sphere.  This  was  the 
mystery  in  his  preaching  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

b)  The  God  in  whom  Jesus  had  faith  was  a  living  God, 
present  in  the  world  as  a  father  with  the  children  in  the 
father's  house.  His  people  had  lost  faith  in  the  presence  of 
a  living  God  piloting  history.  They  lifted  up  their  eyes  to 
the  great  future.  They  believed  in  a  God,  far-off  now,  who 
would  draw  nigh  again  in  that  future.  Their  faith  had  be- 
come hope. 

Those  who  held  themselves  rather  aloof  from  the  popular  piety 
and  the  inflamed  national  hopes,  the  specifically  religious,  the 
legally  minded,  scribe-taught  circles,  lost  the  soil  of  reality  from 
under  their  feet,  and  the  sense  for  reality  at  all.  They  created  a 
pseudo-reality  in  their  schools  of  learning,  in  their  quiet  chambers, 
with  the  roll  of  the  law;  in  place  of  the  living  reality  of  God,  not 
entirely  lost  indeed,  there  were  the  spider's  webs  of  their  scholasti- 
cism, in  which  they  thought  that  they  apprehended  the  true  will  of 
God,  the  learned  and  acute  intei-pretation  of  the  Scriptures,  joy  in 
disputation  and  in  odd  subtleties,  and  the  high  regard  and  venera- 
tion of  numerous  scholars.' 

At  first  sight  it  might  seem  that  Jesus  did  not  oppose 
to  this  attitude  a  God  who  was  a  present  reality.  He 
preached  a  kingdom  of  God  that  was  to  come,  as  we  have 
seen;  and  we  must  not  replace  his  eschatological,  apocalyp- 
tic, catastrophic  expectation  by  our  modern  ethical,  evolu- 
tionistic,  philosophic  concept  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  But 
when  we  probe  to  the  heart  of  the  matter,  we  see  also  that 
Jesus  expected  nothing  in  the  future  save  what  he  himself 
experienced  in  the  present,  namely,  the  nearness  of  God, 
the  vision  of  the  Invisible,  the  stilling  of  the  hunger  and 
thirst  for  God,  the  victory  of  the  good  over  the  evil.  This 
future  for  which  he  hoped  was  already  present  in  his  own 
soul.     However,  we  do  not  think  rightly  of  Jesus  when  we 

1  BoussET,  op.  cit.,  pp.  49,  50. 


486    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

picture  his  soul  as  a  deep,  clear,  placid  mountain  lake.  He 
fought  and  suffered;  the  storms  and  waves  of  his  inner  life 
were  not  unlike  ours.  We  have  not  a  high-priest  who 
cannot  be  touched  with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmity.  In  the 
days  of  his  flesh  he  offered  up  prayers  and  supplications, 
with  strong  crying  and  tears,  unto  Him  that  was  able  to  save 
him  from  death.  He  must  have  doubted  and  wrestled  con- 
cerning his  God,  concerning  the  knowledge  of  his  will,  and 
resignation  to  that  will.  But  his  God  spake  to  him — spake 
to  him  out  of  the  resistance  of  the  multitude,  out  of  the 
hostility  of  his  enemies,  out  of  the  cordiality  of  his  friends, 
and  out  of  the  gratitude  of  the  needy.  And  he  grew  sure 
of  God  as  a  present  reality.  But  he  must  reconquer  this 
sureness  ever  anew  in  quiet  hours.  He  entered  into  his 
closet,  and  when  he  had  closed  the  door,  he  prayed  to  his 
Father  which  seeth  in  secret.  Out  on  the  mountain-top  at 
the  blush  of  dawn,  or  in  the  moonlit  garden  of  Gethsemane, 
prayer  comforted  him;  for  he  heard  his  Father's  voice  in 
the  solitude.  The  field  through  which  he  wandered  com- 
forted him;  for  it  told  him  that  not  all  the  seed  fell  in  good 
ground,  but  some  among  thorns  and  thistles,  some  on  rocks 
and  beaten  path.  Out  of  everything  did  his  heavenly 
Father  speak  distinctly  and  clearly,  comforting  and  strength- 
ening words — his  heavenly  Father,  generous  and  magnani- 
mous, devoted  to  the  service  of  others — clothing  lilies, 
watching  sparrows,  numbering  the  hairs  of  his  children's 
heads,  making  their  carking  anxiety  about  food  and  raiment 
unbelief  and  impiety.  Out  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  of  his 
people  did  this  God  speak  to  him.  But  it  seems  that  it  was 
in  prayer  that  God  spake  most  powerfully  and  most  immedi- 
ately to  Jesus.  Whether  he  experienced  moments  of 
ecstasy,  like  Buddha  and  Paul,  may  not  be  so  surely  known. 
Stories  like  the  baptism  and  temptation  seem  to  suggest  as 
much.     What  remains  only  inner  experience  to  such  petty 


Jesus  487 

souls  as  ours  often  takes  the  shape  of  hearing  and  seeing  in 
mighty  prophetic  spirits. 

A  present,  living  reality — that  was  Jesus'  God.  Never 
was  God  so  living  a  reality  in  any  other  man's  life.  Jesus 
breathed  in  the  reality  of  God.  All  that  was  in  his  life 
was  religion,  as  all  in  the  life  of  the  great  masters  was 
music  or  art  or  science.  In  all  his  words  Jesus  directed 
his  own  soul  and  the  souls  of  his  hearers  to  God  in  every 
situation  of  life.  In  the  case  of  Jesus,  faith  in  God  as  his 
Father  was  a  feeling  of  the  abiding  nearness  of  God;  the 
filial  consciousness  which  knows  nothing  distant,  strange, 
unfamiliar,  unhomelike  in  his  Father ;  the  jubilant  certainty 
that  God  had  completely  disclosed  his  heart  to  him.  The 
son  knoweth  the  Father.  Jesus  felt  that  there  was  a  depth 
and  intimacy  of  God's  fatherliness  toward  him  which  was 
exceptional,  unshared,  unique.  Not  that  he  held  that  he 
was  co-ordinate  with  God.  The  church's  thought  on  this 
subject  would  have  been  poor  comfort  to  his  devout  and 
dependent  spirit.  To  his  pious  soul  God  never  ceased  to  be 
his  God. 

c)  Jesus'  God  is  the  holy  will  that  rules  over  the  world 
and  over  history,  and  is  thus  best  thought  of  as  spiritual,, 
personal  reality.  Still,  Jesus  did  not  so  nearly  approach 
abstract  language  when  he  spoke  of  God.  His  thoughts  in 
reference  to  God  may  be  gathered  around  two  words.  King 
and  Father;  the  former  symbolizing  the  power  and  glory 
and  awfulness  of  God;  the  latter,  the  love  and  grace  and 
faithfulness  of  God.  This  conclusion  is  rendered  anteced- 
ently probable  by  a  consideration  drawn  from  the  history 
of  religion  in  general,  and  the  revelation-religion  por  excel- 
lence in  particular.  If  what  God,  in  his  brooding  over  man, 
had  already  accomplished  of  self-revelation  prophesied  and 
necessitated  new  stages  of  revelation ;  and  if  there  is  unity 
in  God's  revelation — as  indeed  there  must  be,  since  God  is 


488   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

one  God — there  is  already  a  presumption  in  favor  of  this 
conclusion;  for  the  history  of  religion  shows  that  belief  in 
God  dawned  in  the  personification  of  nature-powers  exciting 
fear  and  awe,  on  the  one  hand,  and  in  animistic  ideas,  fore- 
runners of  ancestor-cult,  on  the  other.  The  evolution  of  the 
former  led  to  the  idea  of  the  power  and  majesty  of  the  divine, 
that  is,  to  the  conception  of  God  as  King;  of  the  latter,  to 
the  moral  nature  of  the  divine,  that  is,  to  the  conception  of 
God  as  Father,  by  whatever  name  in  each  case  the  wor- 
shiper named  him.  The  Father-name  is  of  very  ancient 
coinage,  and,  instead  of  its  application  to  God  being  original 
with  Jesus,  all  the  higher  religions  have  given  this  title  to 
God.  The  ancient  Greeks  called  God  "the  father  of  gods 
and  men."  We  are  also  his  offspring,  says  a  poet  quoted 
by  Paul.^  In  the  canonical  writings  of  the  Old  Testament 
God  is  frequently  called  the  Father  of  Israel.^  In  post- 
exilic  apocrypha  God  is  spoken  of  as  the  Father  of  the 
individual.^  But  this  refers  to  a  discussion  of  little  impor- 
tance, since  the  greatness  of  the  word  "father"  suffers  no 
injury  by  the  surrender  of  the  traditional  opinion  that  the 
application  of  the  name  "Father"  to  God  was  new  with 
Jesus.  Not  to  dwell  upon  extra-Christian  religions,  we  are 
concerned  rather  with  the  fact  that  both  of  the  ideas  under 
consideration  belong  to  the  Jewish  and  Christian  religions. 
Old  Testament  theology  exhibits  the  development  of  the 
idea  of  God,  passing  from  a  primitive  stage  belonging  to 
the  sphere  of  nature-religion  on  to  a  degree  of  spiritual  and 

iThe  quotation  is  from  a  curious  poem  by  Aratas,  a  native  of  Cilicia,  Paul's 
own  province,  who  lived  about  300  B.  C.    It  opens  with  an  invocation  to  Zeus  : 

From  Zeus  begin :  and  never  let  us  leave  His  name  unloved. 

With  Him,  with  Zeus,  are  filled  all  paths  we  tread  and  all  the  marts  of  men; 

Filled,  too,  the  sea  and  every  creek  and  bay: 

And  all,  in  all  things,  need  we  help  of  Zeus; 

For  we,  too,  are  his  offspring. 
2Deut.  14:1;  32:5f.;  Hos.2:l;  Isa.l:4;  30:9;  43:6;  45:11;  63:16;  64:7;  Jer.  3:4, 
14,19;  31:8,20;  Matt.  2:10;  cf.  Psa.  103:13. 

3  Sir.  23 : 1,  4 ;  51 :  10 ;  Wisdom  2 :  13,  16,  18 ;  14:3;  Tob.  13:4;  Enoch  62 :  11 ;  etc. 


Jesus  489 

moral  character,  the  highest  conceivable  within  the  limits 
of  the  national  consciousness.  Here,  too,  the  notion  of 
kingliness  grew  from  the  natural,  fatherliness  from  the  his- 
torical and  from  the  moral.  God  is  taskmaster,  law-giver, 
judge;  but,  also,  Israel's  creator,  redeemer,  protector.  The 
nation  knew  itself  to  be,  not  only  servant  who  experi- 
ences the  master's  power  and  vigor,  but  also  son,  first-born, 
heir,  who  experiences  the  father's  love.  While  the  idea  of 
kingliness  is  dominant  in  pre-Christian  Judaism,  it  can  by 
no  means  be  said  that  the  name  "  Father "  as  applied  to 
God  is  to  be  regarded  as  merely  exceptional — it  is  there 
organically. 

This  brief  reference  to  the  subject  is  sufficient  for  the 
purpose  of  this  discussion.  Assuming  orderliness  and 
development  in  revelation,  we  should  naturally  expect  to  find 
the  two  moments  recurring  in  the  faith  of  Jesus.  And  this 
is  what  we  do  find.  .  On  the  one  hand,  the  thought  of  Jesus 
is  affiliated  upon  the  Old  Testament  conception  of  the  holy, 
supramundane  God,  who  is  to  be  obeyed  and  feared.  He 
confesses  the  "God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac,  and  of  Jacob," 
the  "God  of  Israel,"  To  his  faith,  God  is  "Lord  of  heaven 
and  earth,"  to  whom  "all  things  are  possible."  "Heaven  is 
his  throne,  the  earth  his  footstool,"  "Jerusalem  the  city  of 
the  great  King."  Especially  does  all  human  fear  vanish 
before  the  fear  of  "Him  who  can  destroy  both  soul  and  body 
in  hell."  On  the  other  hand,  God  is  Father  to  the  faith  of 
Jesus.  But  did  Jesus  consider  that  God  was  the  Father  of 
all  men?  The  burden  of  the  apostolic  testimony  seems  to 
be  that  God  is  "the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,"  and 
our  Father  through  him.  In  John's  gospel  Jesus  as  the 
Son  is  the  correlative  to  Father — words  which  have  deep  sig- 
nification in  this  gospel;  and  the  fatherliness  of  God  to 
other  men  is  grounded  in  their  relation  of  faith  and  life  in 
the  only-begotten  Son.     And  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any 


490   The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Keligion 

distinct  or  definite  passage  in  the  synoptics  in  which  Jesus 
teaches  explicitly  that  God  is  the  equal  Father  of  all  man- 
kind. But  other  considerations  may  be  urged  on  account  of 
which  we  may  not  let  the  matter  rest  here.  There  is  some 
objection  to  the  extra-scriptural  phrase  "  fatherhood  of  God." 
In  the  popular  mind,  "fatherhood"  is  a  word  with  an  onto- 
logical  connotation,  and  refers  to  the  structural  constitution 
and  character  of  God.  Thus  the  word  directs  attention  to 
what  God  is  metaphysically  rather  than  morally.  But  such 
a  conception  is  foreign  to  the  mind  of  the  biblical  writers  in 
general,  and  to  Jesus  in  particular.  It  is  certain  that 
Jesus'  faith  is  moral-religious,  not  speculative ;  grounded  in 
the  experience  of  the  benefits  received  from  God,  not  in  an 
analysis  of  the  ontological  essence  of  God.  As  Jesus 
attempted  no  proof  of  the  existence  of  God  (he  needed  none, 
nor  did  he  seem  to  think  that  anyone  else  did),  so  he  con- 
structed no  definition  of  God,  aspired  to  no  psychology  of 
the  divine  mind,  had  nothing  whatever  to  say  of  the  inner 
mechanism  of  deity.  He  couched  his  faith  in  symbols — 
King,  Father — appropriate  to  the  heart  and  will,  not  in 
concepts — Infinite,  Absolute,  World-Ground,  First  Cause — 
intended  for  the  speculative  understanding.  His  use  of  the 
word  "Father"  is  to  express  a  certain  moral  attitude,  purpose, 
feeling  of  God  toward  man;  therefore  the  fatherliness,  not 
the  fatherhood,  of  God.  Of  God's  metaphysical  relation  to 
man  Jesus  seems  to  have  known  nothing.  That  side  of  the 
inscrutable  Power  over  all  things,  which  is  akin  to  man,  is 
the  only  thing  that  Jesus  knew  of  God;  more  he  did  not 
desire  or  need  to  know.  Morally,  God  is  the  Father  of  all 
men,  in  varying  degrees  indeed,  for  fatherliness  and  filial- 
ness  are  correlative  terms.  Thus,  there  was  of  necessity  a 
cordiality,  a  complacency,  an  intimacy,  in  God's  fatherliness 
toward  Jesus,  and  toward  those  whom  Jesus  brought  into 
filial  relations  to  God,  which  could  not  obtain  between  God 


Jesus  491 

and  the  impious.  Nevertheless,  the  everlasting  truth  must 
not  be  overlooked  that  the  absence  of  filialness  in  man  does 
not  extirpate  the  fatherliness  of  that  God  whom  Jesus  had  in 
mind  when  he  said:  "Love  your  enemies,  and  pray  for  them 
that  persecute  you;  that  ye  may  be  sons  of  your  Father 
which  is  in  heaven :  for  he  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil 
and  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and  the  unjust.'" 
Furthermore,  if  God  were  universal  King  and  not  universal 
Father  would  not  sin  have  to  be  interpreted  as  a  rebellion 
against  authority,  or  an  insult  to  dignity,  rather  than  the 
cruel  and  guilty  thing  that  it  is — a  wound  inflicted  upon 
the  heart  of  love  ?  How  can  sin  be  made  to  appear  exceed- 
ing sinful  if  it  be  not  seen  to  be  impiety  toward  a  father, 
and  how  can  misery  be  known  at  its  depths  if  it  be  simply 
due  to  the  disobedience  of  a  servant  to  his  master,  and  not 
to  the  loneliness  and  degradation  and  remorse  of  a  lost 
child  that  has  exiled  itself  from  the  father's  home?  Such, 
at  least,  would  seem  to  be  fairly  implied  in  Jesus'  own  par- 
able of  the  Prodigal  Son. 

Thus  it  appears,  that  to  Jesus,  God  is  King  and  Father. 
But  these  two  are  not  like  the  two  foci  of  an  ellipse,  but  the 
center  of  a  circle.  The  king  is  fatherly,  and  the  Father  is 
kingly.^  Kingliness  is  ethicized  by  fatherliness,  and  father- 
liness is  energized  by  kingliness.  God  as  King  is  the  all- 
controlling  power,  the  will  on  which  all  is  dependent;  God 
as  Father  is  the  eternal  goodness  by  which  this  will.  Lord 
of  heaven  and  earth,  is  determined  and  moved.  These  two 
thoughts  of  God  not  only  do  not  conflict,  but  reciprocally 
condition  and  require  each  other.  Fatherliness  attains  its 
fruition  when  the  Almighty,  protecting  his  supremacy  to  be 
sure,  exalts  man  to  himself  in  free,  prevenient,  unmerited 
love;  and  almightiness  finds  its  paramount  and  worthy  task 
in  the  endowment  of  man  with  the  kingdom  of  God.     And 

iMatt.  5:44,  45.  2  Matt.  11:25  f. 


492    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Eeligion 

yet  these  words  should  be  modified  by  the  addition  that,  in 
the  faith  of  Jesus,  the  real  center  of  the  center  is  fatherli- 
ness  rather  than  kingliness;  for  God  is  love.  What  man 
needed  most  of  all  to  learn  was  just  the  truth,  immediately 
certain  to  Jesus,  that 

The  All-Great,  were  the  All-Loving  too — 
So,  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice 
Saying,  "O  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here! 
Face  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself!"* 

Does  Jesus'  thought  or  man's  need  go  beyond  this?  Is  it 
not  the  absolute  religion? 

The  question  of  the  novelty  of  Jesus'  thought  of  God  has 
often  been  raised.  What  is  there  in  his  God-faith  that,  in 
the  long  historical  movement,  has  the  merit  of  progress,  of 
originality?  What,  in  his  belief,  is  to  be  credited  to  in- 
heritance and  environment  ?  Suppose  that  by  some  alchemy 
the  possession  which  he  shared  with  his  predecessors  and 
contemporaries  could  be  disengaged,  would  the  residuum,  if 
there  be  a  residuum,  be  fairly  the  limit  of  his  originality, 
the  source  and  measure  of  his  influence  upon  the  doctrine  of 
God  ?  There  are  considerations  decisive  against  the  adequacy 
and  justness  of  this  standard.  For  one  thing,  it  will  appear 
that,  while  many,  perhaps  all,  of  his  thoughts  of  God  may 
be  discovered  among  the  sayings  of  men  of  religious  genial- 
ity prior  to  his  day;  while,  moreover,  as  a  true  son  of 
Israel,  he  would  never  think  of  proclaiming  a  new  God ;  yet 
no  religious  genius  had  cherished  all  of  his  thoughts,  nor 
held  them  in  the  same  combination  and  with  the  same  em- 
phasis. All  the  tones  or  notes  of  a  musical  masterpiece 
may  be  detected  elsewhere;  but  the  harmony  is  new,  its  con- 
structive idea  is  original,  its  influence  peculiarly  its  own. 
The  composer  of  the  production  did  not  cull  out  the  notes 
from  other  compositions,  and  piece  them  together  in  an  out- 

1  RoBEET  Beowning,  "  Epistle  "  (end). 


Jesus  493 

ward  and  mechanical  whole;  the  masterpiece  is  not  an 
aggregate  of  tones  from  without,  but  the  evolution  of  a 
musical  life  from  within.  So,  similarly,  Jesus'  belief  con- 
cerning God  may  exist  in  its  separate  constituents  elsewhere, 
but  he  was  no  eclectic  putting  opinions  together  in  an  arbi- 
trary whole  foreign  to  his  own  consciousness  of  God.  His 
belief  was  unitary,  aus  einem  Gussj  to  it  is  to  be  accorded 
the  originality  of  wholeness  and  harmony,  of  inwardness  and 
depth.  But,  for  another  thing,  the  measure  of  his  influence 
upon  the  doctrine  of  God  may  not  be  narrowed  to  the 
novelty  of  his  contribution  in  ideas  to  that  doctrine.  For 
the  dignity  of  his  personality,  the  character  of  his  own 
reactions  of  will  and  feeling  against  the  God-idea,  the  way 
the  theistic  belief  appeared  in  him,  invest  even  the  same 
beliefs  in  others  with  a  value  and  an  authority  in  excess  of 
what  they  would  otherwise  deserve.  Grant  that  what  eTesus 
says  of  God  has  no  more  intrinsic  truth  than  what  Moses,  or 
Jeremiah,  or  Plato  had  said  of  him ;  still,  by  so  much  as  the 
religious  energy  of  his  human  personality  is  higher  than 
theirs,  by  so  much  will  the  weight  of  the  influence  of  what 
he  says  be  greater  than  theirs.  The  origin  of  a  belief  may 
not  be  due  to  Jesus,  but  its  power,  its  creativeness,  its  his- 
torical fruitfulness,  may  be  seen,  after  varying  fortune,  to 
depend  ultimately  on  him  alone.  Therefore,  in  estimating 
the  influence  of  Jesus'  thought  of  God,  it  is  not  enough  to 
ask:  "Did  he  say  anything  new?  May  it  not  be  derived 
from  what  has  gone  before  ?  Would  it  not  be  more  accurate 
to  say  that  it  is  only  'relatively'  new?"  To  be  sure,  there 
have  been  mediations  and  developments;  to  be  sure,  one 
torch  kindles  another,  one  prophet  awakens  another,  even 
the  Great  Prophet;  but  how  does  it  come  that  a  helpful  in- 
sight, a  saving  thought,  is  loosely  inherited,  from  one 
generation  to  another,  like  a  dead  stone,  till  some  strong 
personality  seizes  it  and  strikes  fire  from  it?     So,  for  cen- 


494    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Keligion 

turies,  a  great  and  blessed  thought  of  God,  message  of  a 
Jonah  or  a  Jeremiah,  had  fallen  unappreciated  and  impotent, 
until  that  thought  attained  full  fruition  in  the  soul  of  Jesus. 
But  liow  did  Jesus'  faith  in  God  come  to  be  what  it  was  ? 
Given  his  faith  in  the  worth  of  man,  his  life  of  service  for 
man,  and  the  question  is  easily  answered.  His  faith  in  God 
was  born  of  the  conviction  that  the  Power  which  sends  rain 
and  causes  the  sun  to  shine,  which  clothes  flowers,  birds,  and 
men,  which  lets  them  live  and  lets  them  die,  has  the  same 
sense  of  the  worth  of  man,  the  same  joy  in  man,  which  he 
himself  had  and  which  he  required  of  others.  He  could 
say  nothing  higher  of  God  than  what  he  required  of  man, 
namely,  that  he  was  kind  to  friend  and  foe  alike,  to  the  good 
and  the  evil.  God  is  like  man  as  man  ought  to  be.  God 
is  Father,  man  is  child.  And  if  man  knows  how  to  give 
good  gifts,  God  does  too.  But  Jesus  knew  the  humanness 
of  God  more  especially  from  himself.  Jesus  could  not 
help  thinking  that  that  which  he  felt  as  the  highest  and 
divinest  in  himself  was  also  the  highest  and  divinest  in 
God.  His  own  heart,  pure  as  it  was,  felt  itself  drawn  in 
compassionate  pity  and  redeeming  love  to  the  misery  of  sin- 
ners ;  hence  he  felt  sure  that  such  holy  and  healing  love  had 
its  home  in  the  bosom  of  the  Eternal,  Because  Jesus  was 
merciful,  he  thought  of  God  as  the  merciful  Father,  who 
seeks  the  lost  sheep  till  he  finds  it.  God  is  like  Jesus — this 
is  the  gospel.  No  school  doctrine,  no  preaching  of  repent- 
ance even  like  John's,  but  the  glad  message  that  the  dis- 
position and  bearing  of  the  Eternal  Will  toward  man  are 
like  those  of  the  merciful,  pleading  Nazarene — this  is  the 
best  that  we  dare  to  believe.  That  the  love  of  God  does  not 
decrease,  but  increases  with  the  measure  of  guilt,  that  the 
greatest  sinner  is  precisely  as  such  the  object  of  the  greatest 
compassion  of  God — this  is  the  new,  incomprehensible, 
wonderful  revelation  which  the  words  of  Jesus  announce  and 


Jesus  495 

his  person  guarantees.  That  God  forgives  sins,  and  founds 
a  new  fellowship  between  man  and  himself,  as  if  sin  had 
never  intervened  —  this  it  is  which  constitutes  the  center  of 
the  gospel. 

God  is  like  Jesus!  Perhaps  this  is  too  good  to  be  true. 
Certainly,  the  modern  man  has  come  to  see  that  God  is  a 
terrible  God.  The  enthusiastic  optimism  of  Jesus  is  likely 
to  be  met  with  bitterness  and  derision  on  the  part  of  those 
who  know  nothing  of  the  mild  and  friendly  features  of  the 
divine  countenance.  We  cannot  forget  some  grim  and  lurid 
descriptions  of  the  history  of  life  on  our  planet,  written  by 
a  Huxley,  or  a  John  Stuart  Mill,  or  a  Schopenhauer,  or,  for 
the  matter  of  that,  the  latest  socialist.  If  God  is  indeed  the 
God  without  whose  will  no  sparrow  falls  from  the  roof  and 
no  hair  from  our  heads,  he  is  also  the  God  who  pilots  the 
long  catastrophic  development  of  our  earth,  who  pitilessly 
destroys  man  and  man's  works  in  the  fury  of  the  sea  and 
the  fire  of  the  land;  he  is  also  the  lord  and  leader  of  the 
cruel  struggle  of  existence  which  wipes  out  whole  peoples 
from  the  face  of  the  earth,  no  matter  how  faithfully  and 
vigorously  they  struggle  to  exist;  he  is  the  God  who  lets 
the  hopes  and  seeds  of  the  individual  man's  life  pitilessly 
perish.  Is  this  God  concerned  in  the  genesis  and  maturity 
of  moral  personality  ?  Where  is  pity ;  where  is  forgiveness  ? 
What  more  can  be  expected  of  us  than  to  bow  in  fear,  abase- 
ment, and  resignation  before  this  God  of  our  day  who  is  so 
mighty,  and  whose  power  is  often  so  painfully  mysterious? 
The  church  is  right  in  saying  that  Jesus  is  but  an  excep- 
tion, an  episode — as  men  of  science  would  say,  a  "sport,"  in 
the  process  of  the  world — for  a  cross-section  of  reality  as  a 
whole  discloses  no  image  and  superscription  of  his  spirit  as 
characteristic  of  the  entire  development.  God  is  not  like 
Jesus;  he  is  like  Herod,  or  Caiaphas,  or  Nero. 

And  we   turn  from  this  bewildered  and  bleeding  con- 


496    The  Finality  op  the  Cheistian  Keligion 

sciousness  of  the  modern  man  back  to  Jesus  only  to  find 
that  Jesus  had  no  TModic6e.  He  wrote  no  justification  of 
the  ways  of  God  to  man.  We  find  no  hint  of  such  a 
thing — the  best  proof  that  he  did  not  anxiously  elaborate 
an  "idea"  of  God,  but  lived  in  him.  It  may  be  that  the 
burden  of  the  problem  was  somewhat  alleviated  for  Jesus, 
since  he  considered  the  devil  to  be  the  immediate  cause  of 
moral  evil,  of  suffering  and  temptation — a  consideration 
which  has  lost  its  cogency  to  the  modern  mind.  Still, 
Jesus  thought  that  God  was  Lord  over  the  devil  and  could 
hinder  his  works,  if  he  so  willed;  hence  the  problem 
remained  at  bottom  much  the  same  for  Jesus  as  for  us.  A 
man  should  pray  God,  said  Jesus,  not  to  lead  him  into 
temptation.  How  can  one  also  call  this  God  Father?  The 
violent  paradox  of  calling  this  God  an  all-good  Father  is 
the  greatest,  the  most  daring  thing  the  human  spirit  has 
ever  ventured.  But  it  is  just  the  great  mystery  of  religion 
to  endure  such  contradictions,  to  live  upon  them.  There  is 
abundant  indication  in  the  record  that  Jesus  so  lived.  In 
full  and  true  humility,  he  bowed  before  the  almighty  and 
enigmatic  God.  It  was  a  leaf  from  the  innermost  life  of  his 
own  soul  when  he  said:  "Be  not  afraid  of  them  which  kill 
the  body,  and  after  that  have  no  more  that  they  can  do. 
But  I  will  warn  you  whom  ye  shall  fear:  fear  him,  which 
after  he  hath  killed  hath  power  to  cast  into  hell:  yea,  I  say 
unto  you,  fear  him."^  And  these  are  terrible  words.  Jesus 
was  spared  nothing.  God  cast  disillusion  upon  disillusion, 
pain  upon  pain,  in  his  path.  The  beginning  of  his  work 
was  hopeful  in  the  glad  Galilean  time.  "All  men  seek  thee. 
Master,"  said  the  disciples,  as  the  unshepherded  multitudes 
flocked  after  him.  But  it  did  not  last.  With  a  supreme 
effort,  the  tide  of  his  popularity  lingered  up  among  the 
rocks  for  a  moment;  but  it  was  only  for  a  moment;  it  could 

1  Luke  12 : 4  f . 


Jesus  497 

not  stay;  soon  it  went  back  to  sea;  and  the  next  time  the 
tide  came  in  it  was  not  the  sunlit  wave  of  fame,  but  the 
cold  remorseless  billow  of  death  and  hell.     Soon  "there  was 
much  murmuring  among  the  multitudes  concerning  him; 
for  some  said,  He  is  a  good  man;  others  said.  Nay,  he  is  not 
a  good  man,  he  deceiveth  the  people."'     "From  that  time 
many  of  his  disciples  went  back,  and  walked  no  more  with 
him.     Jesus  said  therefore  unto  the  twelve.  Would  ye  also 
go  away?"     "While  Jesus  yet  spake  cometh  Judas  Iscariot, 
one  of  the  twelve,  and  with  him  a  multitude  with  swords 
and  staves."^     "Be  ye  come  out,  as  against  a  thief,  with 
swords  and  with  staves  to  take  me.     When  I  was  daily  with 
you  in  the   temple,  ye    stretched  forth   no  hands    against 
me"^ — so  Jesus  said  out  of  wounded  love.     "But,"  he  goes 
on  to  say,  as  he  explains  it  all  to  himself,  "this  is  your 
hour  and  the  power  of  darkness."     "Then  said  Pilate  to  the 
people,  I  find  no  fault  in  this  man.     And  they  were  the 
more   fierce,   saying.   He    stirreth  up   the   people   teaching 
throughout  all  Jewry."*     "And  they  that  passed  by  reviled 
him,  wagging  their  heads  and  shooting  out  their  lips" — so 
did  that  wild  mob  that  once  shouted  hosanna,  now  heaping 
nameless  cruelties  and  indignities  upon  him  as  the  horrors 
of  the  cross  thickened  around  him.     So  it  was  —  a  brief 
period  of  popularity,  then  standstill,  regress ;  scorn,  derision, 
and  hostility  from  the  influential;  the  perfidy  of  the  masses; 
the  clear  consciousness  of  the  abortiveness  of  his  work;  the 
intimation,  passing  into  certainty,  of  his  own  melancholy 
fate,  the  dumb  helplessness  of  the  few  who  remained  faith- 
ful to  him;  betrayal  from  the  circle  of  his  friends;  infinite 
solitude  and  forsakenness;  and  a  death  of  torture.     Jesus 
experienced  the  conviction  that  God  was  a  terrible  God, 
and  that  a  mysterious  darkness  and  dreadfulness  encom- 
passed him,  even  for  those  who  stood  closest  to  him.     And 

1  John  7: 12.  2  Mark  14:43.  3  Luke  22:  53.  ■* Luke  23:5. 


498    The  Finality  of  the  Cheistian  Religion 

yet  Jesus,  in  every  moment  of  his  life,  said  to  the  God 
who  stood  before  his  soul  surrounded  with  impenetrable 
mystery:  "Father!"  To  this  God  he  fled  when  the  bitter 
disillusions  of  his  life  menaced  his  peace:  "I  thank  thee, 
Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  that  thou  hast  hid  these 
things  from  the  wise  and  the  understanding  and  hast 
revealed  them  unto  babes.  Even  so,  Father,  for  so  it 
seemeth  good  in  thy  sight." ^  Facing  the  overthrow  of  his 
cause  and  his  own  doom,  in  Gethsemane  he  agonized: 
'■'■Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass  from  me;  never- 
theless, not  my  will,  but  thine  be  done" — "the  deepest 
religious  words  ever  spoken,"  as  Professor  Harald  Hoffding 
remarks.  With  this  great  "nevertheless,"  peculiar  to  true 
faith,  all  his  life  through  he  built  a  bridge  between  the 
almighty,  enigmatic  God  of  eternity  and  finite  man.  In 
contemplating  this  spectacle,  Harnack  writes: 

The  Christian  faith  is  not,  as  is  so  often  said,  a  sweet  trans- 
figuration of  the  earthly  life,  or  a  pleasant  supplement  to  the  toil 
and  hardships  of  life.  No;  it  is  decision  for  God  and  against  the 
world.  It  is  concerned  with  eternal  life,  with  the  recognition  that 
there  is  a  kingdom  of  holiness  and  love  in  and  above  natm'e,  a  city 
not  built  with  hands,  whose  citizens  we  all  ought  to  be. 

This  message  is  connected  with  the  requirement  of  repentance 
and  self-denial,  and  we  feel  that  a  choice  must  be  made  —  a  choice 
which  decides  concerning  our  inner  life.  Is  victory  possible  in 
this  warfare  ?  And  is  the  issue  one  of  a  higher  reality  compared 
with  which  the  world  is  nothing?  Or  do  we  perhaps  deceive  our- 
selves concerning  our  feelings  and  presentiments?  Are  we  perhaps 
completely  identified  with  the  struggle  of  unfree  natme,  with  the 
struggle  of  our  earthly  existence,  and  are  we  waging  a  pitiable  war 
with  oiu:  own  shadows  and  with  ghosts  ?  These  are  the  questions 
of  questions  and  the  doubts  of  doubts.  Now,  ever  since  there  has 
been  Christian  faith,  they  are  solved  by  a  look  at  Jesus  Christ — 
solved  not  in  the  form  of  philosophic  demonstration,  but  by  a  look 
of  trust  at  the  picture  of  his  life.  When  God  and  all  that  is  holy 
threaten  to  sink  into  shadows,  or  when  judgment  breaks  over  us; 

1  Matt.  11 :  25. 


Jesus  499 

when  the  mighty  impressions  of  the  inexorable  life  of  nature  over- 
master us,  and  the  bounds  between  good  and  evil  seem  to  melt 
away;  when  we  ourselves  become  dull  and  sated,  despairing  of 
ever  knowing  God  in  this  dark  world,  then  this  person  is  able  to 
save  us.  Here  a  life  was  lived  entirely  in  the  fear  of  God,  stead- 
fast, unselfish,  and  pure;  here  shines  a  loftiness  and  love  which 
draws  us  to  itself.  Here  all  was  ceaseless  war  with  the  world,  bit 
by  bit  one  earthly  good  after  another  was  lost,  until  at  length  the 
life  itself  went  down  in  ignominy,  and  yet  —  no  soul  can  escape 
the  impression:  Who  so  dies,  dies  well;  he  does  not  die,  but  lives. 
It  was  in  this  life  and  death  that  the  certainty  of  an  eternal  life 
and  of  a  divine  love,  which  overcomes  all  evil,  yea,  even  sin  itself, 
first  dawned  upon  humanity.  The  worthlessness  of  the  world  and 
of  all  earthly  goods,  as  compared  with  a  glory  that  death  cannot 
touch,  has  dawned  upon  humanity.' 

Thus,  for  one  modern  man,  the  interpretation  of  reality 
in  terms  of  Jesus  gives  courage  and  heart  to  live  and  to 
hope,  in  the  face  of  the  destruction  of  all  earthly  goods, 
even  of  life  itself.  So  will  it  always  be.  To  him  who 
enters  into  Jesus'  experience  of  God  and  faith  in  God^ 
Paul's  triumphant  assurance  is  even  today  not  impossible: 
"I  am  persuaded,  that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor  angels, 
nor  principalities,  nor  things  present,  nor  things  to  come, 
nor  powers,  nor  height,  nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature, 
shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God,  which  is 
in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord.'"^  But  if  it  be  true  that  these 
great  words  mean :  God,  in  spite  of  suffering,  even  they  do 
not  express  the  height  and  depth  of  Jesus'  experience  of 
God,  for  Jesus  experienced  God  i)i  suffering.  To  experience 
God  in  pain  is  redemption. 

But  does  the  supreme  practical  value  for  life  of  the 
valuation  of  God  in  terms  of  Jesus  prove  the  truth  of  such 
valuation?  Is  that  idea  or  belief  which  works  best  to  be 
judged  as  true  on  that  account  ?  Perhaps  so ;  perhaps  not. 
The  question  is  the  burden  of  the  latest  movement  of  phi- 

1  Reden  unci  Aufsatze,  Vol.  II,  pp.  13  f.  2 Rom.  8:  38  f. 


500   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

losophy.  In  all  ultimate  questions  we  seem  to  be  shut  up 
to  practical  solutions  only.  Still,  some  considerations  may 
be  adduced  to  vindicate  the  right  and  verity  of  the  judg- 
ment that  reality  as  a  whole  is  most  justly  and  worthily 
appraised  in  terms  of  that  part  of  it  which  Jesus  constitutes. 
Certainly,  if  an  artist  should  be  praised  according  to  his 
best  picture,  or  a  man  according  to  his  best  life,  or  our  race 
according  to  its  best  civilization,  we  may  not  hesitate  to 
treat  reality  in  general  thus  generously.  It  is  to  our  credit 
to  do  so;  and  let  us  reverently  hope  that  reality  may  be 
duly  appreciative.  And  we  may  further  judge  that,  as  the 
best  moments  of  our  individual  lives  are  but  samples  of 
what  our  whole  life  can  yet  become,  as  the  highest  human 
type  is  what  the  entire  human  race  may  yet  be  able  to 
realize,  so  the  best  exemplar  of  existence,  which,  so  far  as 
we  know,  is  Jesus,  is  an  illustration  of  the  consummation  of 
the  cosmic  movement,  as  reasonably  to  be  hoped  for  as 
devoutly  to  be  wished.'  Does  not  the  steady  upward  struggle 
of  existence — as  Tennyson  puts  it,  the  "eternal  process 
moving  on" — of  which  we  already  have  so  long  a  record, 
guarantee  that  the  ideal  and  goal  cannot  be  badness  instead 
of  goodness,  hate  instead  of  love?  Good  alone  is  for  its 
own  sake,  and  evil  for  the  sake  of  the  good;  even  as  the 
ugly  in  art  is  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
beautiful.  History  affords  a  certain  confirmation  of  this 
conception.  It  exalts  to  its  true  honor  the  good  which  was 
once  defamed,  in  which  no  beauty  was  once  seen  that  man 
should  desire  it;  and  exhibits  the  nothingness  of  the  base 
and  the  bad.  There  were  Pilate  and  Jesus!  How  the 
rCles  have  changed!  Long  ago  Pilate  would  have  sunk 
into  the  sea  of  eternal  oblivion  which  has  swallowed  up   so 

1  To  be  sure,  this  suggestion  can  have  no  weight  to  that  ecclesiastical  dogmatism 
■which  affirms  that  Jesus  does  not  have  his  origin  in  the  race,  but  is  an  alien  and 
▼isitor,  and  which  also  denies  the  unity  and  continuity  of  the  natural  and  historical 
world. 


Jesus  501 

many  procurators  and  high-priests,  had  not  his  name  been 
fastened  to  the  memory  of  a  Man  whom  he  allowed  to  be 
nailed  to  the  cross.  The  story  of  the  crucifixion  will  not  be 
told  to  the  end  of  time  to  honor  Pilate  and  Caiaphas,  but  to 
prove  that  the  cause  of  truth  and  righteousness  cannot 
perish  from  the  earth,  but  is  the  permanent  interest  of 
humanity. 

Thus  is  iniquity  ceaselessly  annihilated  in  the  recollec- 
tions which  humanity  preserves  of  its  own  life.  Is  the 
thought  preposterous,  that  this  recollection  is  a  fragment  of 
an  Absolute  Recollection  in  the  Divine  Consciousness,  and 
that  persistence  in  this  Eternal  Consciousness  is  the  real 
being  for  spiritual  things,  rather  than  that  transitoriness  in 
the  temporal  consciousness  of  the  individual  ?  ^ 

But  to  return  to  Jesus.  Fear,  abasement,  resignation, 
are  not  the  only  aspects  of  consciousness  which  the  behavior 
of  reality  warrants.  From  this  beginning  we  may  lift  up 
our  eyes  to  the  summit  of  faith  to  which  Jesus  led  human- 
ity: "our  Father  who  art  in  heaven."  To  believe  as  Jesus 
believed  is  not  simply  to  rise  above  the  visible  world,  and  to 
see  behind  the  bewildering  manifoldness  the  all-embracing, 
all-sustaining  work  of  God,  but  also  to  cast  ourselves  upon 
the  bosom  of  God,  and  hold  him  steadily  by  the  hand.  The 
very  perfection  and  fruition  of  faith  is  that  I — a  mote  in  a 
sunbeam,  a  fugitive  thought,  it  might  seem,  of  the  Eternal 
Mind — that  I  loose  myself  from  the  flight  of  phenomena 
and  speak  to  him,  the  Infinite  and  Incomprehensible,  and 
say  "I,  I  and  Thou— Thou  my  Father,  I  thy  child;"  that 
I  dare  be  certain  that  I  am  more  to  him  than  the  works  of 
his  hands;  that  he  will — not  shelter  me  from  suffering  and 
pain — but  lead  me  with  a  fatherly  and  friendly  hand.  I 
dare  to  be  certain  that  I  can  conquer  eternal  worth,  if  I  but 

1  Such,  at  all  events,  is  the  thought  of  many  philosophers,  e.  g,,  Paulsen,  to 
whom  lam  indebted  for  this  query.    See  his  System  der  Ethik,  pp.  256  f. 


502    The  Finality  op  the  Cheistian  Eeligion 

receive  him  and  his  world  into  my  life.  For  the  goal  of  his 
manifold  eternal  work  is  the  creation  of  a  divine  kingdom, 
not  of  this  world.  To  this  kingdom  shall  belong  all  men 
who  have  become  and  desire  to  become  free  personalities, 
rooted  and  grounded  in  eternity — instead  of  being  transi- 
tory nature-beings,  fugitive  creatures  of  the  moment,  ruled 
by  the  world  of  sense  and  its  laws.  The  laws  of  this  king- 
dom are  the  values  of  the  divine  world:  righteousness  and 
truth,  faithfulness  and  kindness,  love  and  purity.  And  for 
us  to  have  faith  is  to  know — nay,  to  be  certain  and  to  expe- 
rience— that  we  are  called  to  this  divine  kingdom — we  with 
our  weaknesses  and  pettinesses,  our  earthliness  and  our  sin- 
fulness. To  experience  the  certainty  that  our  sins,  which 
separate  us  from  God,  are  forgiven  —  this  is  the  innermost, 
blessedest  mystery  of  faith.  "All  things  are  possible  to  him 
that  believeth,"  for  the  believer  takes  his  stand  with  God 
and  in  God's  world.  The  earth  lies  chained  at  his  feet. 
Quietly  and  composedly  he  can  look  that  sphinx  in  the  eye 
which  is  called  life.  Whatever  may  come,  comes  from  the 
Father's  hand.  When  the  storm  breaks,  the  believer  may 
bow  his  head,  but  not  let  go  the  Father's  hand,  which  will 
lead  him  to  the  end  of  life's  little  day.  "It  is  thy  will,"  he 
says;  "thy  will,  not  mine,  be  done."  The  man  of  faith  knows 
that  all  that  happens  is  only  that  he  may  be  more  firmly 
rooted  in  eternity,  that  he  may  grow  up  more  and  more  into 
God's  world.  All  things  are  possible  to  faith,  even  what 
might  seem  impossible  —  that  a  heart,  enmeshed  in  the  sweet 
habits  of  pleasure  and  passion,  should  awaken  from  its  stupid 
dream  and  turn  to  the  light ;  that  a  will,  old  and  set  in  self- 
ishness and  sin,  should  become  receptive  and  hungry  for 
goodness;  that  old  things  should  pass  away  and,  behold,  all 
things  become  new.  If  the  God  of  Jesus  is  the  God  of  the 
whole  world,  if  God  is  like  Jesus  in  disposition  and  purpose, 
the  faith  that  the  end  of  creation  is  the  production  of  moral 


Jesus  503 

personalities,  and  that  man  as  man  is  to  be  valued  in  terms 
of  this  possibility,  is  as  reasonable  as  indispensable,  much  as 
there  are  times  when  our  faith  must  wince  and  writhe  under 
what  seems  to  be  the  blind,  raw  force  of  some  hard  blow  of 
destiny  which  comes  crashing  into  our  lives,  or  into  the  lives 
of  others  around  us. 

There  is  one  other  item,  of  quite  a  different  character, 
which  our  discussion  may  not  omit.  It  is  Jesus'  worship  of 
God.  His  worship  would  be  conditioned  by  his  concep- 
tion of  God.  It  has  been  said  by  some  students  that  Jesus' 
thought  of  God  did  not  overcome  the  standpoint  of  either 
extra-mundane  transcendence  or  national  particularism.  As 
regards  the  former,  it  may  perhaps  be  admitted  that  Jesus' 
intellectual  conception  of  God  is  not  philosophically  accept- 
able, since  he  seems  to  have  conceived  of  God  as  an  indi- 
vidual being,  alongside  of  other  individual  beings.  It  is 
not,  however,  his  theoretical  apprehension  of  God,  any  more 
than  of  the  world,  to  which  all  future  generations  could  hope 
to  turn  for  light.  It  is,  instead,  his  religious  relation  to 
God,  which  is  of  more  importance  by  far.  His  uniform 
employment  of  the  symbol  "Father"  when  he  speaks  of 
God,  or  to  God,  however,  is  in  harmony  with  the  philo- 
sophic idea  of  immanence  rather  than  of  transcendence. 
The  important  matter  is  that,  for  Jesus,  God  is  a  purely 
spiritual  reality;  that  there  is  nothing  material  or  nature- 
like in  him.  His  belief  is  doubtless  reflected  in  the  great 
words,  which  probably  he  never  spoke:  "God  is  spirit:  and 
they  that  worship  him  must  worship  in  spirit  and  truth.'" 
His  whole  communion  w4th  God  was  spiritual  and  personal — 
and  it  is  this  relation  of  life,  rather  than  any  conclusion  of 
speculation,  that  is  of  abiding  value  to  humanity. 

As  regards  the  latter,  both  the  affirmative  and  the  nega- 
tive side  of  the  question  have  been  supported.     It  has  been 

1  John  4:24. 


504    The  Finality  op  the  Christian  Religion 

maintained  that,  after  all,  Jesus'  God  was  the  folk-God  rather 
than  the  Father-God.  While  there  is  the  absence  of  any 
indication  that  Jesus  was  interested  in  the  popular  hope  of 
a  triumph  of  the  Jewish  people  over  the  nations,  yet  it  does 
not  appear  that  extensively  his  thought  was  universally  hu- 
man. His  conversation  with  the  Syrophoenician  woman,  his 
explanation  that  he  was  sent  only  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the 
house  of  Israel,  his  apparently  harsh  word  that  bread  should 
not  be  taken  from  the  children  of  the  house  and  given  to 
the  dogs^ — all  this  points  in  that  same  direction.  There  is 
also  his  instruction  to  his  disciples,  that  they  should  not  go 
to  the  gentiles,  nor  into  the  cities  of  Samaria,  but  to  the  lost 
sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel.^  It  does  not  appear  that  Jesus 
ever  visited  the  heathen  evangelistically ;  only  where,  them- 
selves unsought,  they  met  him  and  preferred  request  for 
help,  did  he  as  an  exception  allow  himself  to  be  importuned, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Syrophoenician  woman  and  the  cen- 
turion of  Capernaum.  And  the  supposition  would  seem  to 
be  warranted  that  his  surprise  at  the  faith  ^  of  the  latter 
indicates  that  he  had  not  seriously  canvassed  the  possibility 
of  heathen  faith.  To  be  sure,  other  words*  seem  to  support 
the  position  that  he  expected  many  to  come  from  the  east 
and  from  the  west  into  the  kingdom.  But  do  these  words 
exceed  the  expectation  of  the  prophets  that  only  a  remnant 
of  Israel  should  be  saved,  and  that  many  gentiles  would  join 
the  remnant  and  together  worship  on  Mount  Zion,  but  that 
the  people  of  God  would  always  be  Israel,  and  Jerusalem  the 
center  of  the  cult?  In  harmony  with  this  view,  at  the  Last 
Supper  Jesus  said  it  was  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel  over 
which  his  disciples,  under  him,  should  rule.^  Of  such  rule 
over  the  nations  of  the  earth  Jesus  nowhere  spoke,  if  the 
consensus  of  critical  opinion  be  correct  that  the  account  of 

1  Matt.  15:24  ff.  2  Matt.  10:5.  3  Matt.  8: 10. 

*  Luke  13 :  28  f .  =  Matt.  8 :  11  f .  5  Luke  22 :  29. 


Jesus  505 

the  last  judgment'  does  not  come  from  Jesus,  but  from  the 
ecclesiastical  evangelist;  and  that  the  command  to  preach 
the  gospel  in  all  the  world^  and  to  baptize  all  peoples^  like- 
wise has  later  origin  in  the  ecclesiastical  consciousness,  as 
indeed  the  approximately  trinitarian  formula  itself  betrays. 
It  does  not  appear  that  Jesus  ever  meant  to  found  a  new 
church,  or,  in  his  piety,  to  pass  beyond  the  horizon  of  the 
piety  of  his  people.*  There  are  traces  in  the  parables  that 
the  evangelists  were  inclined  to  credit  Jesus  with  their  own 
conviction  of  the  universal  destiny  of  Christianity.^  Says 
Schnedermann : 

In  all  this  Jesus  did  not  find  himself  in  disagreement  with  the 
totality  of  his  people,  with  the  broad  masses  and  their  leaders.  No 
one,  the  Baptist  excepted,  had  ventured  to  go  so  far  as  Jesus.  But 
one  could  hear  him  as  Israelite,  be  led  by  him,  and  expect  the 
things  that  he  would  bring,  and  yet  ever  remain  on  Israelitish  soil. 

Even  Schultz  says  as  much: 

Jesus  did  not  separate  himself  from  the  worship  of  Israel — 
although  he  showed  personally  no  need  of  it — and  he  did  not 
oppose  the  sacred  usages  of  his  people,  unless  their  fui'ther  main- 
tenance was  inconsistent  with  the  great  principles  of  piety  and 
morality.® 

While  thus  a  case  may  be  made  out  for  the  extensive 
particularism  of  Jesus,  nevertheless,  intensively,  the  particu- 
larism of  the  old  religion  was  broken  from  within  by  him. 
The  correlate  of  the  spirituality  and  internality  of  the  law 
is  its  universality ;  of  the  love  of  God  and  his  lordshijD  over 
heaven  and  earth,  the  coequality  of  all  peoples  in  privileges 
of  worship;  of  the  infinite  worth  of  man,  the  humble,  child- 
like soul  not  satisfied  with  the  world,  purity  of  heart,  and 

iMatt.  25:31  f.  2  Matt.  24:14.  3  Matt.  28:18  f. 

*  If,  as  his  eschatology  seems  to  involve,  he  did  not  think  this  world  had  a 
future,  he  could  not  have  anticipated  the  future  world-career  of  the  church.  But  if 
he  builded  wiser  than  he  knew,  the  inexhaustible  power  of  his  inner  life  is  not  on 
that  account  any  the  less  real  and  worthful. 

5  Luke  14 :  21  ff. ;  Matt.  21 :  43. 

6  Outlines  of  Apologetics,  translated  by  A.  B.  Nichol,  p.  208. 


506    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

the  resolute  will  that  can  dare  all  for  the  highest,  as  the  sole 
indispensable  condition  of  bliss  in  God.  The  simple  human 
duties  are  the  real  content  of  God's  will.  Man's  love  that  is 
born  of  the  love  of  God  sets  free  from  all  limits  of  national 
narrowness  and  personal  egoism.  The  Samaritan  cannot  be- 
come neighbor  to  the  Jew,  and  not  have  the  privilege  of 
loving  and  worshiping  the  God  of  the  Jews.  Supposing, 
then,  that  Jesus'  standpoint  is  tantamount  to  the  overcoming 
in  principle  of  particularism,  even  if  he  did  not  in  thought 
and  practice  draw  the  full  conclusions  which  flow  from  his 
principles,  he  is  thereby  but  an  illustration  of  what  has  been 
true  in  the  case  of  every  epoch-making  personality;  nay,  of 
what  is  inevitable  to,  and  indicative  of,  genuine  human  nature 
everywhere.  But  this  look  of  particularism  may  not  fairly 
be  construed  into  a  blemish  upon  the  perfect  spirituality  of 
his  worship.  Dogma  played  no  rOle  in  his  gospel.  To  hold 
right  doctrine  as  central  and  right  life  as  peripheral,  to  say 
"Lord,  Lord,"  and  not  do  the  will  of  the  Father  in  heaven  — 
everyone  knows  how  offensive  this  was  to  Jesus !  No  law 
intervened  between  Jesus  and  God.  The  law  was  abrogated 
through  disposition.  Jesus  freed  worship  from  the  legal- 
istic, juristic,  casuistic — from  circumcision,  tithing,  sabbath- 
keeping,  prayer-saying,  almsgiving.  He  placed  the  soul,  not 
before  custom  and  usage,  regulation  and  letter,  not  before 
the  petty  and  painful  fulfilment  of  the  law,  but  immediately 
before  the  living  God.  With  him  it  was  sursiim  corda  to 
pure  spiritual  heights.  Nor  did  he  require  a  mediation 
by  means  of  cult  between  the  worshiper  and  God.  The 
presupposition  of  cult  is  that  deity  is  satisfied  if  the  temple 
is  cared  for,  if  sacrifices  are  offered,  if  sacred  customs  are 
properly  observed.  This  being  fulfilled,  life  may  then  go 
on  in  its  natural  bent.  But  the  whole  sacred  cult  of  his 
people  signified  nothing  to  the  piety  of  Jesus.  His  life  was 
lived,  far  removed  from  the  temple  and  its  cult.     Worship 


Jesus  507 

is  the  fulfilment  of  the  divine  will.  It  is  not  sacrifice,  but 
mercy,  that  God  requires;  not  clean  hands,  but  a  clean 
heart;  not  pompous  "service,"  but  holiness  of  life;  not 
hearkening  to  traditions,  but  love,  fidelity,  righteousness, 
and  purity.  Jesus  unconditionally  exalted  placability  toward 
the  brother  and  the  care  for  one's  parents  above  service  at 
the  altar.  Jesus  effected  an  inner  emancipation  of  piety 
from  cultus.  All  external  and  ritual  action  was  to  yield  to 
morality  as  conceived  by  religion.  One  stone  shall  not  be 
left  upon  another  of  the  temple,  he  said,  with  little  concern. 
But  so  precious  was  the  temple  to  the  religious  party  that 
his  words  cost  him  his  life.  Nor  did  Jesus  place  the  value 
upon  mysticism  in  worship  which  is  to  be  found  in  most 
religions.  Mysticism  is  the  attempt  to  enter  into  com- 
munion with  God  by  means  of  the  excitation  of  the  feelings. 
Not  this,  but  simple,  obvious,  common  morality  was  the  way 
to  God.  Mystical  feeling  is  very  easily  betrayed  into  extra- 
ethical  or  unethical  conduct.  Nor  did  Jesus  establish  any 
new  forms  in  which  piety  should  express  itself.  He  lived  in 
a  day  when  mysteries  and  sacraments  energetically  strove 
for  the  victory  over  the  internalizing  and  ethicizing  of  the 
faith  in  God.  From  all  this  Jesus  was  far  removed.  He 
knew  no  sacrament.  He  did  not  baptize.  At  the  last  meal 
— meal,  that  is  what  it  was — the  bread  and  wine  were  sym- 
bols of  his  death.  But  it  seems  that  ideas  from  pre-Christian 
and  sub-Christian  religion  conquered  admission  into  the  new 
religion.  If  faith  and  personal  relation  of  the  believer  to 
God  were  the  main  thing,  it  was  thought  that  the  "objective," 
the  material,  that  mysterious  media,  outer  acts,  could  not 
be  dispensed  with. 

To  the  Christians'  baptism  soon  became  a  bath  in  water,  with 
marvelous,  purifying,  consecratiug    effect  — an    effect    produced 

1  With  reference  to  Paul,  Weede,  Paulus,  pp.  70, 71,  writes  as  follows :  "Finally, 
a  word  concerning  the  sacraments.  Here  especially  is  the  point  where  one  can  see 
that  the  coarse,  massive  view — nay,  one  must  say  it,  the  superstitions  and  magic  of 


508    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

through  the  element  of  consecrated  water;  the  giving  of  a  name 
at  baptism,  a  means  of  protection  against  evil  spirits.  The  meal 
became  a  miraculous,  sacred  food  by  means  of  which  communion 
with  God  and  eternal  life  were  granted  to  the  believer,  or  a  sacri- 
ficial act  to  be  constantly  repeated.  Of  all  this  we  find  nothing  in 
the  simple  gospel.  The  earthly  Jesus  did  not  institute  the  act  of 
baptism.  It  is  an  institution  of  his  church.  The  meal  has  its 
point  of  connection  in  the  impressive  act  of  Jesus  on  the  evening 
before  his  death.  But  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that  Jesus  intended 
the  act  to  be  repeated  by  his  disciples.  And  the  assumption  that 
Jesus  meant  to  found  a  sacrament — an  act  which,  as  outer  perform- 
ance over  and  above  personal,  believing  relation  of  man,  mediates 
a  super-earthly,  spiritual  blessing  to  man — contradicts  the  entire 
bearing  and  spirit  of  Jesus.  It  is  here  that  we  see  the  gospel  of 
Jesus  in  its  unsurpassable  purity — a  gospel  whose  intrinsic  power 
must  work  again  and  again  in  an  emancipating  way,  against  all 
malformations  and  all  sensualizing  of  religion.  Jesus  brought  his 
disciples  the  spiritual  personal  God;  with  Jesus  all  depends  upon 
the  personal,  not  upon  things  (Dinglichen  und  Sachlichen)} 

To  which  may  be  added  the  noble  words  of  Schultz: 

Because  Jesus  promulgated  no  external  laws  and  ordinances 
that  must  grow  old,  but  eternal  and  fundamental  ideas,  he  has 
created  something  that  can  renew  itself  afresh  in  every  new  age. 
It  can  be  justly  said  that  the  gospel  of  Jesus  is  no  "positive"  reli- 
gion like  the  others,  that  it  has  nothing  statutory  and  particular- 
istic about  it — that  it  is  therefore  religion  itself.^ 

folk-religion — are  by  no  means  foreign  to  Paul.  He  has  by  no  means  purely  spiritual, 
symbolical  ideas  of  the  sacred  acts  of  baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper,  which,  more- 
over, are  not  his  creations.  Of  course,  he  can,  and  does,  find  symbol  in  them  also, 
but  in  their  real  essence  they  are  as  certainly  sacraments — i.  e.,  acts  which  work  in 
a  nature-like  manner  —  without  personality  with  its  feeling  and  disposition  coming^ 
in  consideration  thereby."  Wrede  then  refers  to  the  significance  of  the  substitu- 
tionary baptism  of  living  Christians  for  the  dead,  that  the  latter  may  have  the  bless- 
ings of  baptism,  and  be  assured  of  their  resurrection  from  the  dead.  Next,  he 
speaks  of  the  idea  that  unworthy  eating  and  drinking  at  the  supper  cause  sickness 
and  even  death,  as  a  purely  magical  result.  Also  of  the  way  that  Paul  expects  the 
bodily  ruin  of  a  sinful  member  banished  from  the  church;  etc.  See  1  Cor.  15:  29; 
11:30  f.;  5:5;  Rom.  6:3f.;  Gal.  3:27;  Rom.  6:3  ff. ;  1  Cor.  10:3  f.;  16-21.  However 
one  may  interpret  the  Pauline  passages  upon  this  subject,  it  is  clear  that  Paul's 
thought  has  lost  something  of  the  simplicity  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus,  with  its  insist- 
ence upon  the  unmediated  relation  between  the  divine  Father  and  his  children.  But 
see  my  review  of  Wrede  in  American  Journal  of  Theology,  July,  1905,  pp.  546  ff. 

1  BoussET,  Op.  cit.,  pp.  53  f. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  215.    So,  also,  Harnack  in  Das  Wesen. 


Jesus  509 

6.  Of  the  importance  which  Jesus  attached  to  his  death 
there  is  little  that  can  be  said  with  certainty.  According  to 
the  conclusions  of  historical  criticism,  there  are  but  two 
passages  in  the  synoptics  bearing  upon  the  subject;  the 
giving  of  his  life  a  ransom  for  many,  and  the  words  at  the 
Last  Supper.  As  regards  the  latter,  Bousset  fairly  repre- 
sents critical  opinion  when  he  says  that  in  the  present  situ- 
ation of  things  we  may  not  claim  to  understand  with 
certainty  the  original  meaning  of  the  Last  Supper  of  Jesus. 
Did  the  events  of  the  last  meal-time  have  anything  directly 
to  do  with  the  thought  of  his  death  ?  Doubt  upon  the  sub- 
ject is  at  present  widespread  among  exegetes  and  historians 
who  approach  the  problem  in  a  scientific  spirit.  Certainly, 
Jesus  never  thought  of  instituting  a  "sacrament,"  as  some 
churches  of  Christendom  have  supposed.  Leaving  the  Last 
Supper  out  of  account,  the  single  word  concerning  the 
ransom^  remains.  But  the  character  of  that  tradition  being 
what  it  is,  a  permanent  and  binding  dogma  of  the  Christian 
faith  may  not  be  built,  consistently  with  sound  morals,  upon 
such  a  singular  and  isolated  word. 

It  is  also  improbable  that  Jesus  would  have  raised  the  ques- 
tion as  to  the  j^urj^ose  of  his  suffering  and  death,  if  his  thoughts 
remained  in  a  state  of  intimation  and  conflict  until  Gethsemane. 
It  may  be  that  Jesus  conceived  his  death  in  a  presageful  way  as 
ransom  for  many.  According  to  Jewish  tradition,  the  martyred 
brothers  of  the  Maccabean  period  repeatedly  expressed  in  their 
prayers  the  thought  that  the  wrath  of  God  upon  his  people  would 
be  stayed  through  their  unmerited  suffering.  Thus  may  Jesus, 
mindful  of  this  thought,  have  expressed  the  hope  that  the  wrath 
of  God  for  many  of  his  people  might  be  averted  through  his  own 
suffering.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  deep  and  eternal  tinith  is  hidden 
in  this  faith  in  the  substitutionary  suffering  of  the  righteous  and 
in  the  infinite  worth  of  martyrdom.  But  we  do  not  see  clearly  here. 
The  only  thing  that  is  certain  is  that  Jesus  never  conceived  and 
expressed  the  idea  that  the  divine  forgiveness  of  sin  is  dependent 

1  Mark  10:45. 


510    The  Finality  of  the  Chkistian  Religion 

in  principle  upon  his  death,  or  upon  the  substitutionary  "  satisfac- 
tion "  consummated  in  his  death.  The  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son, 
and  the  unconditioned  certainty  with  which  Jesus  all  his  life  long" 
preached  a  present,  gracious,  sin-forgiving  God,  protest  powerfully 
against  that  traditional  dogma.' 

These  words  are  quoted,  not  as  dogmatically  final,  but  as 
exegetically  and  historically  representative  among  critical 
students  of  the  Bible.  They  are  dogmatically  valuable  as 
indicating  that  the  treatment  of  the  death  of  Jesus  sundered 
from  his  life  should  be  abandoned.  The  sufiPering,  cross, 
and  death  of  Jesus  are  the  crown  and  consummation  of  his 
life.  In  quietness  and  simplicity,  in  soberness  and  bravery, 
Jesus  trod  the  via  dolorosa  appointed  him  of  the  Father. 
In  undiminished  trust  in  the  heavenly  Father,  in  unbroken 
confidence  in  his  own  divine  mission,  he  opened  up  a  new 
moral  world,  ennobled  suffering  and  defeat,  and  created  faith 
in  the  eternal  worth  of  martyrdom.  At  the  cross  Jesus  per- 
fected himself  as  "  the  leader  of  the  times  and  the  peoples  to 
God."' 

We  are  at  the  end  of  our  long  way  once  more.  And  our 
recapitulation  must  be  comparatively  brief,  Jesus  partici- 
pated in  the  theoretical  views  of  his  people  concerning 
nature,  spirits,  man,  and  God.  Like  all  concepts,  histori- 
cally and  psychologically  conditioned,  those,  whether  true 
or  false,  must  change  as  our  times  or  types  change.  The 
condition  of  our  retaining  his  concepts  in  harmony  with  our 
inner  life  is  that  we  be  transplanted  into  his  historical  situa- 
tion, and  transformed  into  his  psychological  temperament 
and  intellectual  requirements. 

Jesus,  in  common  with  the  folk-consciousness,  and  cer- 
tainly with  pious  enthusiasts,  lived  in  the  lively  expectation 

1  BOUSSET,  op.  cit.,  p.  101. 

2  It  is  probably  true  that  the  resurrection  of  the  body  of  Jesus  belongs  to  the 
experience  of  the  Christian  community  rather  than  to  his  own. 


Jesus  511 

of  the  speedy  termination  of  the  history  of  the  race.  The 
national  messianic  expectation  furnished  form  and  frame  for 
his  faith.  The  result  was  the  diversion,  in  good  degree,  of 
his  attention  from  earthly  and  human  relations.  Culture 
and  historical  work,  life  in  the  family  and  in  the  state,  in 
art  and  in  science,  were  accorded  no  immediate  worth  and  no 
positive  importance.  He  did  not  expect  that  the  "kingdom 
of  God"  should  be  actualized  by  means  of  long  historical 
struggle  on  the  firm  soil  of  nature  and  of  human  life,  by 
means  of  the  discovery  and  production  of  values.  One's  sole 
duty  was  to  prepare  for  its  reception  on  its  appearance  in  a 
supernatural  manner  out  of  "heaven."  Yet  no  life  in  pain 
and  anguish,  no  asceticism  in  the  sense  of  self-torture!  No 
funeral  march,  but  pseans  of  victory!  But,  also,  no  ecclesi- 
astical organization;  for  this  was  as  unnecessary  as  partici- 
pation in  culture  and  social  life !  But  in  all  this  there  is 
something  of  great  typical  and  symbolical  importance.  All 
human  life  that  is  of  any  value  is  fired  by  expectancy  and 
enthusiasm.  It  is  ours  to  change  the  object,  but  nurture, 
these  qualities  of  the  subject.  We  seek  in  vain  in  the  life 
of  Jesus  for  the  positive  tasks  and  goods  which  are  valid  for 
our  modern  ethical  point  of  view;  but  depth,  concentration, 
and  expansion  of  soul — which  is  greatest  of  all — may  be 
gained  by  brooding  over  the  heroic  days  of  the  Master. 

To  be  sure,  one  can  find  anything  in  the  New  Testament 
by  employing  pertinent  exegetical  skill ;  detailed  instructions 
how  one  should  live  and  eat  and  dress,  how  one  should  treat 
social,  and  sexual,  and  political  questions.  Very  early  did 
the  church  resort  to  this  art,  and  made  passages  mean  prac- 
tically the  opposite,  sometimes,  of  what  they  clearly  and  dis- 
tinctly meant  actually.  In  the  absence  of  any  historical 
sense,  this  was  often  done  unconsciously.  That  it  was  done 
at  all  was  due  to  the  fixation  of  the  form  and  content  of 
human  life  in  one  historical  situation  as  model  and  authority 


512   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

for  that  life  in  another  and  different  historical  situation, 
with  their  vast  deviation  in  the  region  of  interests  and  ideals. 
It  may  be  that  such  a  procedure  has  its  great  historical  jus- 
tification, but  it  has  its  perils  as  well.  The  history  of  ortho- 
doxy is  the  tragic  history  of  these  perils.  But  reference  is 
made  to  this  subject  simply  to  introduce  a  statement  with 
reference  to  the  scheme  of  the  ecclesiastical  reinterpretation 
of  primitive  Christian  ideas  in  which  Jesus  shared.  What 
was  to  be  done  with  the  opposition  between  the  ideas  of 
Jesus  adjudged  to  be  unchangeably  authoritative,  and  the 
new  duties  which  history  developed  ?  between  the  kingdom 
coming  in  a  transcendent  and  supernatural  way,  and  the 
human  tasks  in  state  and  society  and  family  and  vocation? 
Shall  the  ideas  of  Jesus  be  fixed  or  changed?  A  practical 
solution  became  an  urgent  necessity.  The  Catholic  solution, 
we  have  seen,  was  a  division  of  labor — the  monk  living  the 
perfect  life  according  to  primitive  Christian  ideals;  the 
laymen,  the  imperfect  life,  supplemented  by  merit  of  monks, 
according  to  human  ethics.  By  this  combination  of  the 
ideals  of  Jesus  and  of  primitive  Christianity  with  the  reali- 
ties of  the  historical  life,  ethical  continuity  with  the  original 
values  was  supposed  to  be  preserved.  The  fatality  and 
falsehood  at  the  core  of  this  scheme  have  been  previously 
indicated.  It  is  a  sorry  compromise  which  forgets  that  the 
spirit  of  Christianity  allows  no  division  of  Christians  into 
such  classes.  It  was  a  makeshift  for  the  evasion  of  the  ideal. 
It  involved  the  unethical  and  dangerous  distinction  between 
duty  and  merit.  The  great  problem  of  the  relation  to  Jesus 
and  to  primitive  Christianity  was  not  so  clear  to  Protestants 
as  to  Catholics.  The  Protestant  attitude  arose  from  the 
need  to  protect  the  rights  of  free  conscience.  Protestantism 
found  an  eternal  content  in  primitive  Christianity  which  the 
complicated  hierarchical  system  of  Catholicism  had  rendered 
nugatory.     Hence  the   "return"   to  primitive  Christianity. 


Jesus  513 

The  correlate  to  this  was  the  liberation  of  life  from  Catholic 
authority.  Life  in  the  world  ought  not  to  be  depreciated  in 
favor  of  the  cloister  life.  Not  by  self-appointed  asceticism, 
but  by  inner  devotion  to  the  will  of  God  and  by  trust  in  God, 
was  man  to  attain  the  end  of  his  being.  Secular  life  was 
not  something  to  be  reluctantly  tolerated  under  the  pressure 
of  necessity,  but  to  be  nurtured  and  developed;  and  the 
individual  should  find  his  vocation,  evince  his  dignity,  and 
mature  his  personality,  in  the  faithful  and  intelligent  co- 
operation in  this  development.  But  the  Reformers  did  not 
fairly  face  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  all  this  to  the 
ideals  and  expectations  of  Jesus  and  primitive  Christianity. 
How  were  the  precepts  and  beatitudes  of  Jesus  related  to  the 
conditions  and  tasks  of  the  modern  human  life?  This  ques- 
tion they  did  not  answer.  Later  theologians  of  liberal  mind 
exhibited  such  words  of  Jesus  as  ideal  leaven  which  pervaded 
the  long  historical  process  and  led  to  the  unfolding  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  in  the  orders  and  forms  of  the  secular  life. 
The  ideas  of  "second  advent"  and  "judgment  day"  were 
removed  to  the  horizon  where  they  furnished  a  background, 
dim  and  distant  as  blue  mountains  there.  One  has  learned 
and  experienced  so  much  since  the  days  of  Jesus!  It  was 
an  error  to  expect  the  advent  so  soon!  If  we  cannot  explain 
the  error  away,  it  is  at  least  unimportant!  Like  Catholicism, 
Protestantism  believes  itself  to  be  in  ethical  continuity  with 
Jesus.  These  theologians  did  not  realize  that  we  can  pre- 
serve from  primitive  Christianity  only  what  we  can  put  into 
practice  in  our  new  relations  to  culture  and  to  life.  To 
practice  New  Testament  ethics  is  one  thing;  to  clothe  our 
own  ethical  principles  in  the  garb  of  biblical  formulas  is 
quite  another.  The  fact  that  is  habitually  overlooked  is 
that  our  relation  to  culture  and  life  is  fundamentally  dif- 
ferent from  what  was  the  case  with  Jesus  and  primitive 
Christianity. 


514   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

Recent  theologians,  with  still  clearer  insight,  are  making 
progress  in  the  solution  of  the  problem.  Not  to  renew 
primitive  Christianity,  as  pietism  sought ;  not  to  be  oblivious 
to  the  fact  that,  not  only  in  primitive  Christianity,  but  even 
in  the  words  and  ideas  of  Jesus,  there  is  a  pZzts  which  does 
not  belong  to  the  eternal  and  essential  gospel ;  and,  finally, 
not  to  shrink  back  from  the  indispensable  but  perilous  task 
of  releasing  the  gold  from  the  dross,  the  kernel  from  the 
shell,  the  gospel  in  its  purity  and  simplicity  from  time- 
historical  beliefs — this  is  the  duty  of  the  hour;  a  duty  which 
no  calumny  and  ridicule,  no  loss  and  no  cross,  should  prevent 
the  lover  of  his  kind  from  consummating.  Already  historical 
study  has  convinced  reasonable  people  that  Jesus  bears  the 
marks  of  the  definite  historical  relations  under  which  he 
arose.  Man  in  general  is  no  man  at  all.  Jesus  was  a  par- 
ticular man,  a  Jew  who  lived  and  thought  and  loved  and 
hoped  in  a  definite  time  and  place.  "But  many  features  of 
his  origin  and  development  are  psychological  and  historical 
riddles,"  it  is  said.  Of  course.  But  we  have  no  way  of 
solving  such  riddles  except  by  psychology  and  history. 
Besides,  there  are  many  other  psychological  and  historical 
riddles.  Some  of  these  we  may  never  be  able  to  solve.  But 
we  have  done  with  allowing  such  considerations  to  deter  us 
from  studying  historical  and  psychological  phenomena  his- 
torically and  psychologically.  "But  you  employ  the  human 
as  criterion  of  the  Christian;  you  even  apply  the  standard 
of  human  experience  as  you  seek  to  understand  Jesus,  and 
to  purify  his  true  human  picture  from  all  additions  and  dis- 
figurations; and  you  thus  assume  a  critical  attitude,  as  you 
do  toward  other  humanly  imperfect  products  of  their  time; 
you  do  not  allow  even  what  he  says  to  pass  unexamined  as 
truth."  It  is  even  so.  But  it  is  unavoidably  so,  save  to  a 
blind  faith.  To  censure  us  for  this  is  as  perverse  as  it  is 
to  censure  us  for  hearing  with  our  own  ears  and  seeing  with 


Jesus  515 

our  own  eyes,  as  we  have  already  abundantly  shown.  Be- 
sides— so  sternly  must  we  remonstrate  with  our  opponents 
— to  erect,  independently  of  experience,  the  sayings  of 
Jesus  as  such  into  a  norm  of  life  for  every  time  and  place  is 
immoral,  since  it  tends  to  destroy  the  originality,  certitude, 
and  autonomy  of  the  moral.  "But  you  simply  take  from  the 
life  of  Jesus  what  you  can  use  in  your  own  spiritual  house- 
hold; and  what  you  can  use  you  call  the  'essence,'  the 
'essentials.'"  It  is  even  so.  It  is  what  has  always  been 
done.  It  explains  the  different  types  of  Christianity  that 
have  arisen  successively  and  contemporaneously.  The  fixa- 
tion of  the  essence  is  not  a  gift,  but  a  task ;  not  the  cause  of 
a  type  of  experience,  but  the  effect;  not  simply  intellectual, 
but  moral;  and  not  absolute,  but  relative.  It  is  impossible, 
without  further  ado,  to  make  primitive  Christianity,  an 
oriental  movement,  bearing  the  stamp  of  Jewish  origin,  per- 
haps of  Persian  influence — primitive  Christianity  to  be 
reached  by  us  by  getting  behind  the  Greek  thoughts  and 
conceptional  formations  with  which  it  coalesced;  primitive 
Christianity  whose  modern  development  has  proceeded  under 
cultural  relations,  intellectual,  sesthetical,  ethical,  social, 
which  it  did  not  itself  produce,  and  which  were  not  pre- 
supposed at  the  time  of  its  origin;  I  say  it  is  impossible  to 
make  primitive  Christianity  as  such  the  criterion  of  our 
theory  and  practice  in  life  for  all  time.  What  then?  It 
does  not  on  that  account  lose  its  great  value.  It  is  forever 
there  as  a  fountain  of  life  from  which  all  later  times  may 
drink,  may  draw  what  is  useful  under  their  circumstances. 
Wherever  its  influence  upon  the  human  is  felt,  the  result 
will  be  an  inwardizing  and  deepening  and  concentrating  of 
the  life  of  the  spirit.  Jesus  especially  will  ever  accompany 
our  struggling  race  on  its  weary  way,  supplying  it  dynamic 
and  whispering  his  great  "Excelsior  !"  But  what  we  use  of 
his,  and  hoiv  we  use  it,  will  of  necessity  be  determined  by 


516   The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

our  own  self-dependent  experience  of  life,  and  by  our  rela- 
tions which  both  set  our  tasks  and  yield  our  goods — tasks 
and  goods  of  which  Jesus  had  nothing  to  say,  partly  because 
he  did  not  know  them,  partly  because  they  are  incompatible 
with  the  sole  end  which  he  knew.  In  a  word,  we  may  not 
replace  the  human  by  the  specifically  Christian,  not  even  by 
the  Christianity  of  Jesus;  but  we  may  deepen  and  broaden 
the  human — nay,  first  make  it  fully  and  truly  human — by 
the  power  and  gospel  of  the  person  of  Jesus,  Then,  once 
more,  what  did  he  do  and  what  was  his  spirit? 

Deeply  as  Jesus  participated  in  the  ideas  of  his  people; 
certainly  as  he  expected  no  breach  with  Judaism,  any  more 
than  Luther  with  the  Catholic  church;  continuous  as  he 
was  with  the  past,  he  yet  was  hiraself  a  new  creation  and 
the  great  liberator.  If  it  be  said  that  other  teachers  of  his 
day  and  nation  had  taught  all  that  he  did,  the  answer  is 
that,  whether  this  be  true  or  not,  they  taught  much  more 
than  he  did,  and  that  in  their  teaching  they  did  not  grade 
things  according  to  their  real  worth.  They  attached  impor- 
tance to  the  unimportant,  and  did  not  unerringly  discriminate 
and  signalize  the  eternal.  Paradoxically  stated,  the  addition 
which  Jesus  brought  was  a  great  subtraction.  He  sought 
to  simplify  the  moral  by  expelling  from  it  all  that  was  not 
moral,  the  religious  by  expelling  from  it  all  that  was  not 
religious.  Nothing  in  morals  but  morality,  nothing  in  re- 
ligion but  religion — it  was  this  which  the  reality-loving 
spirit  of  Jesus  so  immediately  discerned.  And  his  process 
of  simplification  was  at  the  same  time  a  process  of  liberation. 
His  gospel  inwardly  frees  from  the  national.  From  the 
kingdom-of-God  hope  of  his  contemporaries  he  releases  the 
single  idea  of  the  rule  of  God,  spiritualizes  and  transfigures 
it,  until  it  becomes  in  principle  universal.  The  international 
character  of  the  Christianity  of  Paul  is  but  an  outward  un- 
folding and  expression  of  the  intensive  universality  of  the 


Jesus  517 

message  and  Man  of  Galilee.  But  universality  means  indi- 
viduality. The  religion  of  Jesus  is  personality-religion. 
"The  soul  and  its  God,  God  and  the  soul" — this  phrase  of 
Harnack  has  been  much  criticised;  but,  while  it  is  not  ex- 
haustive it  is  yet  constitutive  of  the  Christian  religion. 
Again,  Jesus  liberated  religion  from  cult.  On  this  subject 
the  old  eternal  prophetic  fire  flamed  forth  from  his  spirit. 
Love  is  better  than  law;  duty  to  parents,  than  gifts  to  the 
temple  treasury;  placability,  than  altar  service;  mercy,  than 
tithes;  the  sacredness  of  man,  than  the  sacredness  of  tradi- 
tion. So,  too,  he  freed  religion  from  the  letter.  "Ye  have 
heard  that  it  hath  been  said  by  them  of  the  olden  time 
....  J  say  unto  you."  He  did  not  hesitate  to  appeal  from 
the  commandment  of  Moses  to  the  eternal  order  of  creation. 
If  there  was  in  some  ways  an  attitude  of  dependence  upon 
the  Scriptures,  there  was  also  that  of  skepticism  and  criti- 
cism. His  was  no  book-religion,  but  experience-religion. 
Furthermore,  as  Wernle  has  brilliantly  discussed,  Jesus  freed 
religion  from  the  theologians.  As  religion  is  not  cult,  not 
institution,  so  it  is  not  dogma,  nor  formula,  nor  theory. 
Religion  is  too  simple  for  the  theologians.  They  cannot 
teach  religion  any  more  than  they  can  teach  grass  to  grow, 
birds  to  sing,  or  lovers  to  love.  "I  thank  thee,  O  Father, 
Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  that  thou  hast  hid  these  things 
from  the  wise  and  the  understanding  and  hast  revealed  them 
unto  babes." 

Religion  once  free,  it  could  freely  unfold  itself  from 
within.  The  strength  and  purity  of  Jesus'  faith  in  God 
were  a  result.  The  form  of  his  faith  in  God,  the  God-idea, 
may  be  changed,  but  the  content  will  hardly  be  surpassed. 
Even  as  to  the  form,  the  word  "Father,"  which  he  used  as 
a  symbol  for  the  mysterious,  all-encompassing,  almighty 
Power,  whose  interior  depth  is  unfathomable  by  us,  is  not 
likely  to  be  superseded.     The  faith  of  Jesus  overcame  that 


518    The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion 

of  the  law-religion  in  a  distant,  hard,  incomprehensible 
Majesty;  and  that  of  extra-Christian  redemption-religions 
in  distinctionless  universal  Existence.  God  is  a  majestic 
Being  of  Living  Love  and  Purpose  and  Wisdom.  The  cor- 
relate to  the  idea  of  this  Father-God  is  the  idea  of  man  as 
his  child.  Hence  it  is  almost  true  that  not  nature,  only 
man  existed  for  Jesus — nature  only  as  symbol  of  human 
life  and  its  laws.  As  akin  to  God,  man  was  felt  by  Jesus 
to  be  of  infinite  worth  and  worthiness.  Let  man  live  accord- 
ingly, hope  accordingly,  and  let  him  be  treated  accordingly, 
said  Jesus.  So,  too,  Jesus  would  have  religion  expressed  in 
terms  of  morality,  and  morality  beautified  and  energized  by 
the  light  and  life  of  religion.  If  morality  be  the  fruit  of 
religion,  religion  is  the  root  of  morality. 

And  Jesus  was  what  he  taught,  and  taught  what  he  was. 
But  it  must  be  that  God  is  as  good  as  Jesus  is.  Then  we 
may  have  the  faith  which  the  gospel  requires — faith  in  God 
the  Father,  in  his  fatherly  grace  in  forgiving  sins,  and  in 
an  eternal  life. 


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